President Obama’s push to expand renewable domestic energy has put him in an awkward position following the explosions at a nuclear plant in Japan and the subsequent leakage of radiation. While Obama can still talk about solar, wind and biofuels, nuclear power is practically the only way to generate reliable and affordable energy without fossil fuels.

Making things more uncomfortable for Obama, three of his most intimate corporate friends — General Electric, Duke Energy and Exelon — are deeply involved in nuclear energy.

GE has a direct role in the Japan nuclear fiasco — the reactors that exploded were GE Mark 1 reactors. The industrial giant is also famously cozy with the Obama administration. CEO Jeffrey Immelt was an early pick for the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and Obama recently tapped him as chairman of his jobs council.

The close relationship between GE and Obama is conspicuous on the policy front, with agreement on bailouts, stimulus, climate policy, health care reform, high-speed rail, wind energy, electric cars, embryonic research subsidies, export subsidies and more.

Now GE runs the risk of being 2011’s BP. The United States won’t be directly harmed by the radiation from Fukushima, but fear still grips a large swath of Japan. While there were definite Obama-BP connections (Obama booster Tony Podesta was a BP lobbyist and BP also supported cap-and-trade laws), Democrats were able to distance themselves from the oil giant after the spill and even try to pin BP on the GOP. If GE’s design is instead found liable for the problems in Fukushima — and the radiation causes serious harm — there will be no credible way for Obama to run away from his corporate ally.

While GE may be the Obama administration’s closest corporate pal, Duke Energy — the No. 3 nuclear power company in the country — is probably the Obama campaign’s biggest supporter. The president picked Duke’s hometown, Charlotte, for next year’s Democratic National Convention in part because Duke CEO James Rogers promised to underwrite the convention — essentially a pep rally for Obama’s re-election — by guaranteeing a $10 million line of credit. That means that if the DNC Host Committee spends more that it raises, Duke shareholders will make up the difference. It also means the DNC gets to borrow at lower rates than it otherwise would.

Duke’s Midwest power plants are predominantly coal-powered, but they are regulated utilities with government-granted monopolies — if cap-and-trade policies drive up the cost of burning coal, Duke just passes the costs on to its captive Midwest customers.

Meanwhile, Duke’s plants in the Carolinas are nuclear-powered. Nuclear is the only reliable form of energy (outside of hydroelectric in some regions) with near-zero emissions of greenhouse gasses. Taxing emissions counts as a subsidy for nuclear. Duke is asking the Obama administration for more direct subsidies — a federal loan guarantee to build a new nuclear plant in South Carolina.

Then there’s Exelon — the country’s No. 2 nuclear company. Obama’s top political strategist, David Axelrod, was a consultant for Exelon, which is based in Obama’s home state of Illinois. Frank Clark, CEO of Exelon’s Chicago-based subsidiary ComEd, was an Obama advisor and fundraiser, and Exelon director John Rogers has also raised funds for Obama.

Exelon CEO John Rowe is a vociferous and longtime advocate of climate change legislation. In 2009, Forbes reported that if the Waxman-Markey climate legislation — supported by Obama — became law, « the present value of Exelon’s earnings stream would increase by $14 a share, or 28%. »

Also, the man who brokered the merger that formed Exelon was a Chicago dealmaker named Rahm Emanuel — later Obama’s chief of staff, and now the mayor of Chicago. And this week, a top Obama energy aide left the White House to work at Exelon.

Obama is bound tightly with these nuclear giants, so he could suffer if the anti-nuclear backlash spreads. A March poll by Pew Research showed only 39 percent of Americans support expanding nuclear power in the U.S., down from 47 percent in October.

In his energy policy speech at Georgetown on Wednesday, Obama downplayed nuclear power and pledged to tighten nuclear safety regulations. His energy plan looks like an attempt to dull any edge Republicans might gain from public anger over gas prices or worry about utility bills. The White House calls for more domestic drilling and generally adopts the GOP « all-of-the-above » line, which means subsidizing everything.

His liberal base is displeased with his embrace of oil and « clean coal, » but these days Obama needs to run away from his nuclear friends.

… A month into the crisis, the utility acknowledges, there is no end in sight. …

Some Japanese experts now say the effort is in danger of failing unless Japan seeks more help from international experts to bring it to an end. Tetsunari Iida, an engineer-turned-industry critic, said the situation is “beyond the reach” of Japan’s closely knit nuclear establishment. …

[E]xperts say the overheated fuel rods are likely to have suffered extensive damage, and there is a complication for seemingly every advance. …

Tokyo Electric officials told CNN they can’t say when they’ll be able to restore those normal cooling. …

Satoshi Sato, a Japanese nuclear industry consultant, called the current line of attack a “waste of effort.” Plant instruments are likely damaged and unreliable because of the intense heat that was generated, and pumping more water into the reactors is only making the contamination problem worse, he said.

“There is no happy end with their approach,” Sato told CNN. “They must change the approach. That’s something I’m sure of 100 percent.”

After the 1986 Chernobyl accident, the world’s worst to date, the Soviet Union encased the plant’s damaged reactor in a massive concrete sarcophagus. Iida said Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors remain too hot to pour concrete, but he suggested pouring a slurry of minerals and sand over them to carry away heat before encasing them. …

Once Japan’s leaky nuclear complex stops spewing radiation and its reactors cool down, making the site safe and removing the ruined equipment is going to be a messy ordeal that could take decades and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Radiation has covered the area around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant and blanketed parts of the complex, making the job of « decommissioning » the plant – rendering it safe so it doesn’t threaten public health and the environment – a bigger task than usual.

Toshiba Corp., which supplied four of Fukushima’s six reactors, including two on which General Electric Co. collaborated, submitted a roadmap this past week to the plant’s operator for decommissioning the crippled reactors. The study, done with three other companies, projects that it would take about 10 years to remove the fuel rods and the reactors and contain other radioactivity at the site, said Keisuke Omori of Toshiba.

That timeline is far faster than those for other nuclear accidents and contains a big caveat: The reactors must first be stabilized and cooled, goals that have eluded emergency teams struggling with cascading problems in the month since the devastating tsunami damaged their cooling systems. Omori said the extent of damage to the reactors and other problems still need to be assessed.

« The best solution is to entomb the site for 40, 50, 60 years, » said Arnold Gundersen, who wrote part of the Energy Department manual on decommissioning and runs the U.S.-based environmental consulting company Fairewinds Associates.

A Fairewinds study cited cost estimates for decommissioning the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, whose boiling water reactors are similar to Fukushima’s but have fewer problems, that ran as high as $950 million last year and would likely exceed $1 billion next year. Gundersen said the tab for the Japanese plant may end up being many times that amount.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, chief spokesman for Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, has said ideally the Fukushima complex eventually will be returned to « flat land, » meaning the facility is dismantled and removed.

Though an avid user of nuclear power with 54 plants, Japan has little experience in decommissioning and none involving problematic reactors.

Decommissioning troubled reactors tends to be more drawn-out. Parts of Ukraine are still uninhabitable 25 years after the Chernobyl nuclear plant’s No. 4 reactor exploded, while neighboring Belarus began allowing some people to move into its no-go zone last year.

The dun-colored cooling tower and rounded dome of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant’s Unit 2 still loom over central Pennsylvania 32 years after its cooling system malfunctioned, causing a partial meltdown and sending up plumes of radioactive gas. Its final decommission date is two decades away at a cost, as estimated by the U.S. nuclear regulatory agency, of over $850 million.

Unlike Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, where problems were confined to one reactor each, Fukushima has three active reactors that are not cooling properly and at least one of which may be leaking, and four storage pools for spent fuel which have overheated, some to dangerous levels.

« This is going to be inevitably a much more challenging decommissioning than we have experience with, » said Peter Bradford, a former commissioner on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Explosions in the first few days of the crisis at Fukushima showered debris over the site and highly radioactive water has inundated trenches, tunnels and ducts not normally exposed to radiation. Plutonium, which lingers for decades and may cause cancers at high levels of exposure, has been found on site and other highly radioactive elements like cobalt are likely there.

Cesium-137, another long-lingerer linked to cancer, has been detected 15 to 35 miles (25 to 60 kilometers) away from the plant in amounts the scientific journal Nature said this past week suggests that the areas may not be fit for food production for decades, as was the case with Chernobyl.

The Toshiba plan – developed with its Westinghouse Electric Co. unit, the energy company Babcock & Wilcox Co. and the Shaw Group, which specializes in civil engineering – was worked on by 100 specialists and looks at Three Mile Island for lessons, said Omori, the company spokesman.

It predicts that the reactors will be stabilized in several months and envisions moving ahead on multiple tasks simultaneously. Fuel removal could begin late this year while radioactive debris would be cleared and less contaminated equipment outside the reactors demolished, Omori said.

That’s a faster timetable than Three Mile Island, where fuel removal began six years after the accident and took another six years to complete.

Whatever the method, Fukushima’s four problematic units, 1, 2, 3 and 4, will be scrapped. But a final decommissioning may depend on whether the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., keeps Units 5 and 6 running. At Three Mile Island, nuclear fuel from the damaged Unit 2 reactor has been shipped to Idaho and contaminated water has evaporated. But it cannot be fully dismantled and decommissioned until after its adjacent Unit 1 is shut down in 2034.

The Japanese New Service Asashi reports that radiation levels measured by a collaboration of independent scientists from Kyoto University and Hiroshima university refute the official radiation levels released by the Government of Japan.

Radiation levels 400 times normal are expected to remain in communities beyond the 30km evacuation zone.

The scientists pointed out the official Government radiation levels included only two types of radioactive isotopes. Scientists from the university say they have detected 6 radioactive isotopes and have provided new estimates with showing higher levels of radiation being released based on the inclusion of the additional isotopes detected.

The study results are considered more accurate than the study conducted by the science ministry, which only released information concerning two types of radioactive material.

Tetsuji Imanaka, an associate professor of nuclear engineering at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, Satoru Endo, an associate professor of radiation physics at Hiroshima University, and other experts visited Iitate in late March.

They collected soil samples from five locations in the village at depths of five centimeters. All the locations were outside the 30-km radius and were by roadways in various hamlets.

The study found cesium-137 at levels between about 590,000 and 2.19 million becquerels per cubic meter.

After the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986, residents who lived in areas where cesium-137 levels exceeded 555,000 becquerels were forced to move elsewhere.

The amounts of cesium-137 found in Iitate were at most four times the figure from Chernobyl.

If more radioactive materials are emitted from the crippled Fukushima plant, the level of cesium-137 could rise even further.

Calculations were also made of changes in the radiation level in the air one meter above contaminated ground over a three-month period from March 15, when an explosion occurred at the Fukushima plant.

The study found that even after three months there would be between 7 and 21 microsieverts per hour being emitted from the contaminated soil into the air.

If an individual remained outdoors for the entire three-month period, the person would be exposed to between 30 and 95 millisieverts over the period.

Assuming the cesium remains in the soil, the accumulated level of radiation after one year could be between about 70 and 220 millisieverts.

The central government is considering using an accumulated radiation exposure figure of 20 millisieverts over the course of a year as one indicator of whether an evacuation instruction should be issued.

The cesium-137 could move or be washed away by rain and wind, so there is the possibility that the actual accumulated radiation exposure figure could fall below the study’s estimates.

… At No. 2, extremely radioactive material continues to ooze out of the reactor pressure vessel, and the leak is likely to widen with time, a western nuclear executive asserted.

“It’s a little like pulling a thread out of your tie,” said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect business connections in Japan. “Any breach gets bigger.”

Flashes of extremely intense radioactivity have become a serious problem, he said. Tokyo Electric’s difficulties in providing accurate information on radiation are not a result of software problems, as some Japanese officials have suggested, but stem from damage to measurement instruments caused by radiation, the executive said. …

Two other nuclear facilities — a fuel reprocessing plant at Rokkasho and a power plant at Higashidori, both in northern Aomori Prefecture — were running on emergency diesel generators after their external power was knocked out. The single reactor at Higashidori is shut down for maintenance, and all nuclear fuel has been transferred to spent fuel pools, which are being cooled by back-up diesel power, according to the operator, Tohoku Electric.

A third site, the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station in Miyagi Prefecture, lost two of its three external power systems, and cooling stopped temporarily at a spent fuel pool there, Tohoku Electric said. All three plants have been shut down since the March 11 quake, but power is needed to cool the nuclear fuel.

The police say about 12,600 people have died as a result of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. More than 14,700 are listed as missing.

Still, concerns about the plant remain high. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission speculated Wednesday that some of the core of the No. 2 reactor had flowed from its steel pressure vessel into the bottom of the containment structure. The theory implies more damage at the unit than previously believed.

While a spokeswoman for Tokyo Electric dismissed the analysis, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency of Japan agreed that it was possible that the core had leaked into the larger containment vessel.

The possibility raised new questions. The Nuclear Regulator Commission said that its speculation about the flow of core material out of the reactor vessel would explain high radiation readings in an area underneath, called the drywell.

But some of the radiation readings at Reactors Nos. 1 and 3 over the last week were nearly as high as or higher than the 3,300 rems per hour that the commission said it was trying to explain, so it would appear that the speculation would apply to them as well. At No. 2, extremely radioactive material continues to ooze out of the reactor pressure vessel, and the leak is likely to widen with time, a western nuclear executive asserted.

“It’s a little like pulling a thread out of your tie,” said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect business connections in Japan. “Any breach gets bigger.”

Flashes of extremely intense radioactivity have become a serious problem, he said. Tokyo Electric’s difficulties in providing accurate information on radiation are not a result of software problems, as some Japanese officials have suggested, but stem from damage to measurement instruments caused by radiation, the executive said.

Broken pieces of fuel rods have been found outside of Reactor No. 2, and are now being covered with bulldozers, he said. The pieces may be from rods in the spent-fuel pools that were flung out by hydrogen explosions.

The operator of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says seawater radiation levels continue to rise in areas north of the plant.

Tokyo Electric Power Company says it detected on Thursday 110 becquerels of radioactive iodine-131 per cubic centimeter in seawater samples collected 30 meters from outlets in the northern part of the complex.

Workers trying to stabilize the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant Saturday started installing an offshore enclosure behind the facility to prevent radioactive runoff produced by emergency cooling operations from further contaminating the Pacific Ocean.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. plans to enclose the seawater intake for reactor 2 with seven steel sheets and to deploy three 120-meter-wide « silt fences » near it and two other places to contain the toxic water being created by the emergency reactor-cooling strategy.

Webmaster’s Commentary:

Which would probably work if not for the dynamic pressure of tides and ocean currents forcing seepage through the sea bed.

It has been nearly a month since the earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern Japan, but the situation surrounding the reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant remains perilous.

TEPCO is considering installing additional cooling systems as part of a new plan to stabilize the reactors damaged by the March 11 disaster.

According to estimates released by the utility Wednesday, 70 percent of fuel rods at the No. 1 reactor have been damaged. At the Nos. 2 and 3 reactors, 25 percent to 30 percent of fuel rods have been damaged, the utility said.

The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has stepped up its effort to remove highly radioactive water that is hampering restoration of reactor cooling systems.

Tokyo Electric Power Company says contaminated water in a concrete tunnel of the Number 2 reactor has risen 10 centimeters since leakage of the water into the ocean stopped on Wednesday.

The plant operator says a strong aftershock on Thursday night did not damage any facilities of the compound, but the surface temperature of the Number 1 reactor rose sharply immediately after the tremor that hit northeastern Japan minutes before midnight.

The reading stood at 223 degrees Celsius at 7 PM, but it rose nearly 40 degrees just after the quake. The temperature had fallen back to 240 degrees at 6 AM on Saturday.

TEPCO says it will continue close monitoring as what caused the sudden rise in temperature is not known.

Webmaster’s Commentary:

So after all the media celebration that the leak was plugged, they are still going to pump that radioactive water into the ocean anyway!

… Meanwhile, seaweed samples were still showing increasing iodine-131 as of March 28, according to data provided by [Krzystof Starosta, a nuclear chemist and physicist and associate professor at Simon Fraser University].

In samples of dehydrated seaweed taken on March 15 near the North Vancouver SeaBus terminal, the count was zero; on March 22 it was 310 Bq per kilogram; and by March 28 it was 380 Bq/kg. …

The Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) will extend its suspension of import of fruits and vegetables from Shizuoka with immediate effect.

This is after radioactive contaminants were detected in a sample of Komatsuna (Japanese Mustard Spinach) imported from the Shizuoka prefecture. Tests on the shipment yesterday showed that it had 648bq/kg of Iodine-131, … The Codex guidelines for radionuclides in food (other than infant food) for Iodine 131 is 100 bq/kg…

What are the criteria adopted at present in testing the level of radioactive contamination in Japanese food products, and the measures to be adopted when some food products are found to have a level of radioactive contamination exceeding the normal standard?

CFS currently adopts the standards laid down by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, which are international standards, in the Guidelines Levels for Radionuclides in Food following Accidental Nuclear Contamination in testing the radiation levels of food. Relevant radionuclides include iodine-131 (100 Bq/kg), caesium-134 and caesium-137 (1,000 Bq/kg), etc, which are most closely associated with health risks.

If a consignment of food is tested to have exceeded the contamination standard, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department will immediately detain that consignment and arrange for disposal.

… [F]ederal government agencies have said there is no radiation risk to B.C. as a result of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan…

But that hasn’t stopped North Coast MLA Gary Coons from voicing his concerns about the lack of information on radiation levels north of Vancouver. When he recently received calls from constituents in Bella Coola & Haida Gwaii about whether there were increased levels of radiation in the seaweed, he said he didn’t have the answer. And he couldn’t find the answers when he went online. …

“I would be very hesitant in crying wolf, and I’d be very hesitant in saying everything is safe,” said Coons. “I think people should be able to access the information, and come to their own conclusions if they have concerns on the information we have available.” …

Coons is still voicing his concerns: today, he sent out a press release saying he was “still waiting for reassurance about local data.” …

Japanese radiation in Canadian water

Photograph by: YURIKO NAKAO, Credit: REUTERS
But the levels were extremely low, according to the Canadian Health Ministry and well-known experts in the Pacific province of British Colombia.

“Levels of radioactive Iodine-131 rose seven days after the reactor accident in Fukushima, but have dropped considerably since then,” Kris Starosta, a nuclear researcher at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, told the German Press Agency dpa.

Following the highest level of 12 bequerel per litre (bq/1) recorded on March 20, the latest analysis taken on March 29 showed a level of 3.4 bq/1.

HELEN CALDICOTT: … Up to a million people have already died from Chernobyl, and people will continue to die from cancer for virtually the rest of time. What we should know is that a millionth of a gram of plutonium, or less, can induce cancer, or will induce cancer. Each reactor has 250 kilos, or 500 pounds, of plutonium in it. You know, there’s enough plutonium in these reactors to kill everyone on earth.

Now, what George doesn’t understand… You don’t understand internal emitters. I was commissioned to write an article for the New England Journal of Medicine about the dangers of nuclear power. I spent a year researching it. You’ve bought the propaganda from the nuclear industry. They say it’s low-level radiation. That’s absolute rubbish. If you inhale a millionth of a gram of plutonium, the surrounding cells receive a very, very high dose. Most die within that area, because it’s an alpha emitter. The cells on the periphery remain viable. They mutate, and the regulatory genes are damaged. Years later, that person develops cancer. Now, that’s true for radioactive iodine, that goes to the thyroid; cesium-137, that goes to the brain and muscles; strontium-90 goes to bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia. It’s imperative, George, because you’re highly intelligent and a very important commentator, that you understand internal emitters and radiation, and it’s not low level to the cells that are exposed. Radiobiology is imperative to understand these days. …

As it leaks into the water over time, it will bioconcentrate in the food chains, in the breast milk, in the fetuses, that are thousands of times more radiosensitive than adults. One x-ray to the pregnant abdomen doubles the incidence of leukemia in the child. And over time, nuclear waste will induce epidemics of cancer, leukemia and genetic disease, and random compulsory genetic engineering. And we’re not the only species with genes, of course. It’s plants and animals. So, this is an absolute catastrophe, the likes of which the world has never seen before. …

I’m a physician, highly trained. I was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. My specialty is cystic fibrosis, the most common genetic disease of childhood. …

[I]t’s imperative that people understand that internal emitters cause cancer, but the incubation time for cancer is any time from two to 60 years. …

These portraits of the Japanese disaster tend to be proprietary and confidential, and in some cases secret. One reason the assessments are enormously sensitive for industry and government is the relative lack of precedent: The atomic age has seen the construction of nearly 600 civilian power plants, but according to the World Nuclear Association, only three have undergone serious accidents in which their fuel cores melted down.

The next alarms, Dr. Henry said, centered on various types of radioactivity that signal increasingly high core temperatures and melting.

The big players in reactor modeling are federal laboratories and large nuclear companies such as General Electric, Westinghouse and Areva, a French group that supplied reactor fuel to the Japanese complex.

[T]he public authorities have sought to avoid grim technical details that might trigger alarm or even panic.

“They don’t want to go there,” said Robert Alvarez, a nuclear expert who, from 1993 to 1999, was a policy adviser to the secretary of energy. “The spin is all about reassurance.”

On March 21, Stanford University presented an invitation-only panel discussion on the Japanese crisis that featured Alan Hanson, an executive vice president of Areva NC, a unit of the company focused on the nuclear fuel cycle.

“Clearly,” he told the audience, “we’re witnessing one of the greatest disasters in modern time.”

Dr. Hanson, a nuclear engineer, presented a slide show that he said the company’s German unit had prepared. That division, he added, “has been analyzing this accident in great detail.”

The presentation gave a blow-by-blow of the accident’s early hours and days. It said drops in cooling water exposed up to three-quarters of the reactor cores, and that peak temperatures hit 2,700 degrees Celsius, or more than 4,800 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s hot enough to melt steel and zirconium — the main ingredient in the metallic outer shell of a fuel rod, known as the cladding.

Japan and TEPCO covered up radiation levels 7.5 million times above legal limits in the seawater.

Sadly these were levels measured before they dumped 3 million gallons of radioactive water into the ocean.

The Japan Times is now reporting TEPCO and the Japanese government covered up the fact that radiation in the seawater was 7.5 million times the legal limit BEFORE they dumped 3 million gallons of radioactive water into the ocean:

Tokyo Electric Knew Radiation In Seawater Was Sky-High

“’Tokyo Electric knew that the amount of radiation in seawater was 7.5 million times the legal limit even before it started dumping radioactiv­e water in the ocean on Monday. “The unstoppabl­e radioactiv­e discharge into the Pacific has prompted experts to sound the alarm, as cesium, which has a much longer half-life than iodine, is expected to concentrat­e in the upper food chain,” reports Japan Times, prompting fears that all of Japan’s seafood could be declared unsafe.’

Highly toxic plutonium, a byproduct of the nuclear power generation process, was also found at the same locations in samples collected on March 21st and 22nd.

The plutonium appears to be related to the ongoing nuclear accident. TEPCO says the volume is so small that it does not pose a threat to human health.

Webmaster’s Commentary:

« does not pose a threat to human health. » … « does not pose a threat to human health. » … « does not pose a threat to human health. » … « does not pose a threat to human health. » … « does not pose a threat to human health. » … « does not pose a threat to human health. » … « does not pose a threat to human health. » … « does not pose a threat to human health. » … « does not pose a threat to human health. » … « does not pose a threat to human health. » … « does not pose a threat to human health. » … « does not pose a threat to human health. » … « does not pose a threat to human health. » … « does not pose a threat to human health. » … « does not pose a threat to human health. » …

Plutonium Carries Serious Risks to Public Health and the Environment
WASHINGTON – March 30 – The release of plutonium from at least one of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactors carries serious risks to public health and the environment, according to Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). Inhalation of a plutonium particle the size of a speck of dust can lead to lung cancer and death. The particle’s extensive half-life also means it will impact the environment for thousands of years if released into the soil, air or sea.

“The Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident is not winding down at all. I think I have to revise my opinion which was too optimistic.”

[Host:] What was too optimistic?

“We thought the reactors “cold stopped”, which means the uranium fission stopped. But now I’ve started to think the fission has started again. In other words, the reactor has become “critical” again – which we call “recriticality“.”

[Host:] Professor Koide, you were of the opinion that the recriticality was not happening.

“Yes, and I’ve changed my mind. It may be happening.” …

“First, the level of iodine[-131] is not decreasing; it is increasing. Iodine[-131]‘s half life is 8 days. It has been more than 3 weeks since the accident, so the level of iodine[-131] should be about 1/10 of the initial level measured. Second, the presence of chlorine-38 was detected from the contaminated water in the turbine building [he doesn’t say which one].” …

“Well, if chlorine-38 was detected [according to TEPCO], and that can only mean “recriticality”. …

Radiation levels At Japan Fukushima Nuclear Reactor 1 have spiked to 100 sieverts per hour following earthquake aftershock and tsunami. This is far above the 100% lethal dosage of 6 sieverts per hour.

Radiation monitoring charts published by the Japanese government show that the radiation levels at Fukushima reactor number 1 have spiked to 100 sieverts per hour. It should be noted that it actual radiation could actually be higher because 100 sieverts per hour is the maximum that can be displayed on the chart.

Fukushima Reactor 1 Radiation Levels Spike to 100 Sieverts Per Hour

Exposure to this level of radiation will cause immediate death. According to the NIH radiation levels of 4 sieverts per hour will cause fatality in 50% of people and at 6 sieverts per hour death is almost certain. 100 sieverts per hour is far above the 100% lethal dosage amount of 6 sieverts per hour.

The radiation spike came after an earthquake cause to reactors at a separate nuclear power plant to start leaking radiation.

The earthquake also damaged the Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant, where a leak of radioactive water is reported by Japanese TV, citing the NPP operator Tokyo Electric Power. The leak comes from the pools where the used fuel of reactors one and two is stored, but no elevated levels of radiation have been recorded.

The shock was registered at 11:32 pm local time (5:32 pm Bulgarian time) and has an epicenter in the Pacific, 49-meters deep, according to the US Geological Survey.

Eyewitnesses say many buildings have been damaged; there are also reported fires and damage in the gas supply system; over 3.6 million households are without electric power.

There is no new damage discovered at the FukushimaNPP, which was badly struck by the devastating March 11 9-point magnitude on the Richter scale quake and following 10-meter tsunami.

Even with the increased radiation spike up to 100 sieverts per hour the Japan government still denies any new damage was caused by the aftershock to the Fukushima power plant.

The plant operator says a strong aftershock on Thursday night did not damage any facilities of the compound, but the surface temperature of the Number 1 reactor rose sharply immediately after the tremor that hit northeastern Japan minutes before midnight.

The reading stood at 223 degrees Celsius at 7 PM, but it rose nearly 40 degrees just after the quake. The temperature had fallen back to 240 degrees at 6 AM on Saturday.

However, as we all know Japan has not been honest throughout this crisis. It should also be noted that The NY Times recently reported that the Fukushima reactors are very vulnerable to aftershocks at this point because the massive weight in the reactor pools caused by TEPCO trying to inject more water to cool the reactors.

A leaked confidential NRC document on the Japan nuclear disaster reveals the situation in Fukushima is worse than anyone expected. Top scientists in the United States and Japan have discovered a “wide array” of “complex problems” warning that the Japan nuclear disaster could continue on indefinitely and things could start to get much, much worse at any minute. Perhaps the worse news is confirmation that radioactive fragments and particles, including the deadly Plutonium “MOX” fuel, has been shot high into the atmosphere during the hydrogen explosions.

[…]

Major Problems Found

Here is an overview of the major findings of the problems being faced revealed in confidential document.

·Measures taken to keep the plant stable have created a wide array of problems.

·The weight of the water injections have made the reactors vulnerable to ruptures during an aftershock.

·The release of hydrogen mixed with seawater raises the possibility of the explosion.

·The mixture of seawater with molten fuel is blocking fresh water from reaching and cooling the reactors.

·New explosions could lead to further breaches in the containment vessels resulting in a much more serious release of radiation and leave a radioactive mass that would stay molten for a very long period of time.

·Pouring water to cool the reactors may not be able to be sustained indefinitely

·Fragments and particles of nuclear materials may have blown up to one mile high in the sky.

·Radioactive material lying around the plant needed to be bulldozed over.

·Because of the wide array of complex problems in three different reactors a successful outcome is less certain than ever.

·Reactor 1 is likely fully blocked from new water entering to cool it and most likely has no water in it at all.

·Similar problems exist in reactor 2 and 3 although blockage is less severe.

·The spent fuel rods pose an even greater potential for damage then the reactors themselves.

·The hydrogen explosion at reactor for is believed to released lots of radioactive material into the environment in what is termed as “a major term release”.

·Spent fuel rods are being exposed directly to the environment as opposed to the reactors themselves which are still in their containment vessels.

United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment [dated March 26] prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. …

The Times’ article spotlighted several items of extreme importance:

“Semimolten” fuel rods and salt are “impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores” in ALL THREE REACTORS

The water flow in reactor No. 1 “is severely restricted and likely blocked“

Similar problems exist in No. 2 and No. 3, although the blockage is probably less severe

“There is likely no water level” inside the core of reactor No. 1

There is a possibility of “explosions inside the containment structures”

… Tokyo Electric Power Company says it detected 300,000 bequerels of iodine-131 per 1 cubic centimeter, or 7.5 million times higher than the legal limit in samples taken around the water intake of the No. 2 reactor at 11:50 AM on Saturday.

It also found 200,000 bequerels or 5 million times higher than the limit in samples taken at 9AM on Monday.

Monday’s sample also shows 1.1 million times higher than the national limit of cesium-137 whose half-life is 30 years. …

A disturbing study estimates over 220,000 cases of cancer will result from the Japan nuclear radiation fallout.

Those numbers are based on officially released radiation data which we learn more every day are understated lies put out by governments to avert panic.

For example, my next article will discuss breaking NHK news that the Japan Government has covered up data showing extremely high radiation exposure to those outside the 30km evacuation zone.

Furthermore the longer the disaster carries on the higher the number of deaths from cancer will be.

The Health Outcome of the Fukushima Catastrophe Initial Analysis from Risk Model of the European Committee on Radiation Risk ECRR

Conclusions and recommendations

1. The ECRR risk model has been applied to the 3 million people living in the 100km radius of the Fukushima catastrophe. Assuming these people remain living there for one year the number of excess cancers predicted by the method is approximately 200,000 in the next 50 years with 100,000 being diagnosed in the next 10 years. If they are evacuated immediately, the number will fall by a significant amount. For those 7 million living between 100km and 200km from the site, the predicted number of cancers is slightly greater with 220,000 extra cancers in the next 50 years and about 100,000 being expressed in the next ten years. These predictions are based on the ECRR risk model and also the findings of cancer risk on Sweden after the Chernobyl accident.

2. The ICRP model predicts 2838 extra cancers in the 100km population. The eventual yield will therefore be another test of the two risk models.

5. It is recommended that populations living within the 100km zone to the NorthWest of the site are immediately evacuated and the zone is made an exclusion zone.

6. The ICRP risk model should be abandoned and all political decisions should be made on the basis of the recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk http://www.euradcom.org. This is the conclusion of the eminent radiation risk experts who signed the 2009 Lesvos Declaration

High levels of radiation exceeding 1,000 millisieverts per hour have been detected in water in a trench outside the No. 2 reactor’s building at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, with the contaminated water suspected to have come from the reactor’s core, where fuel rods have partially melted, authorities said Monday.

The government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) is expected to pump out similarly highly contaminated water that has been piling up in the basement of the No. 2 reactor’s turbine building, which is connected to the tunnel-like trench, to eventually remove the trench water.

TEPCO said the high radiation level in water in the trench connected to the No. 2 complex was detected Sunday, adding the radiation level in the air of the trench stood at 100 to 300 millisieverts.

TEPCO also found a trench connected to the No. 1 reactor building was filled with radioactive water on Sunday afternoon.

The radiation level at the surface of the trench water adjacent to the No. 1 complex was 0.4 millisievert per hour but the level could not be measured at the gutter linked to the No. 3 unit as rubble prevented the firm from checking it, the company added.

Although it remains unknown whether the contaminated water has flowed into the sea from the trenches that are 55 to 70 meters away from the shore, TEPCO suspects the high concentration of radioactive substances found in seawater near the plant reactors’ drainage outlets may be linked to the trench water.

Haruki Madarame, chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan, a government panel, told reporters he is ‘‘very worried’’ about the high-level radiation detected in water in the trenches, which are outside of the radiation controlled area set by TEPCO.

‘‘We must control the water well so it won’t ever go outside’’ the complex, said Sakae Muto, vice president of TEPCO, at a news conference.

TEPCO has found the concentration of radioactive substances in a pool at the No. 2 reactor’s basement was 100,000 times higher than usual for water in a reactor core.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a press conference the highly radioactive water found at the basement of the No. 2 reactor’s turbine building is ‘‘believed to have temporarily had contact with fuel rods (in the reactor’s core) that have partially melted.’‘

The safety commission chaired by Madarame said in its recommendations to Prime Minister Naoto Kan that highly radioactive water in the No. 2 reactor’s containment vessel could have directly leaked, raising concerns that polluted water could spread to the building’s underground and to the sea.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the nuclear agency, however, denied the possibility that the No. 2 reactor’s vessel has cracks or holes, saying no data suggest such conditions. It is rather likely that radioactive water has leaked from pipes or valves, he said.

Nishiyama said it is now necessary to strike a balance between two missions—injecting coolant water into the reactor cores and spent nuclear fuel pools to prevent them from overheating, and removing radioactive water in the turbine buildings and trenches.

He said the water contamination may have been caused by operations to pour massive amounts of coolant water into the reactors and pools.

In a related development, the nuclear agency said radioactive iodine-131 at a concentration 1,150 times the maximum allowable level was detected Sunday in a seawater sample taken around 1.5 kilometers north of the drainage outlets of the troubled No. 1-4 reactors.

Nishiyama said it is highly likely that the polluted water spotted near the No. 5-6 reactors flowed from the sea area near the No. 1-4 reactors along the coastline.

He said there were no health concerns so far because fishing would not be conducted in the evacuation-designated area within 20 kilometers of the plant and radioactive materials would be ‘‘significantly diluted’’ by the time they are consumed by marine species and then by people.

Removal of highly radioactive water is also meant to reduce the risk of more workers being exposed to radioactive substances. The number of workers who have been exposed to radiation exceeding 100 millisieverts at the plant came to 19 as of Monday, TEPCO said.

Exposure to 100 millisieverts is the legal limit for nuclear plant workers dealing with an emergency, but the limit has been raised to 250 millisieverts during the ongoing crisis, the worst Japan has seen, at the plant some 220 kilometers northeast of Tokyo.

Among the 19, three received treatment at a radiation research center in Chiba Prefecture after they were exposed to radiation of 173 to 180 millisieverts Thursday. They were discharged Monday, with officials of the center saying the exposure has not affected their health.

From the Washington Post: “Samples taken 360 yards offshore from the plant Friday showed radioactive iodine levels 1,250 times the legal safety limit. The levels of iodine-131 in the water had been closer to 100 times the limit this past week.

The operator of Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant said on Tuesday it had found water with 5 million times the legal limit of radioactivity inside a reactor as it struggles for a fourth week to contain the world’s biggest nuclear disaster in quarter of a century.

Underlining the concern over spreading radiation, the government said it was considering imposing radioactivity restrictions on seafood for the first time in the crisis after contaminated fish were found in seas well south of the damaged nuclear reactors.

Webmaster’s Commentary:

« contaminated fish were found in seas well south of the damaged nuclear reactors. »

Contaminated fish do not ‘dilute’ in sea water. They are just as lethal 15,000 miles from Fukushima as they were at 5 miles.

Radioactive iodine-131 readings taken from seawater near the water intake of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant’s No. 2 reactor reached 7.5 million times the legal limit, Tokyo Electric Power Co. admitted Tuesday.

The sample that yielded the high reading was taken Saturday, before Tepco announced Monday it would start releasing radioactive water into the sea, and experts fear the contamination may spread well beyond Japan’s shores to affect seafood overseas.

The operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says 7.5 million times the legal limit of radioactive iodine 131 has been detected from samples of seawater near the plant.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, found on Saturday that contaminated water was leaking from a cracked concrete pit near the No. 2 reactor.

Experts say this makes it clear that highly radioactive substances from the reactor are flowing into the sea, and that the leak must be stopped as soon as possible.

Webmaster’s Commentary:

The media is focused on Iodine because that has a half-life of only 7-8 days and next week they will happily report that radiation levels have dropped. But what they are not talking about are the radioactive isotopes that last far longer which are being released alongside the iodine.

A radiation monitor at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says workers there are exposed to immeasurable levels of radiation.

The monitor told NHK that no one can enter the plant’s No. 1 through 3 reactor buildings because radiation levels are so high that monitoring devices have been rendered useless. He said even levels outside the buildings exceed 100 millisieverts in some places.

Pools and streams of water contaminated by high-level radiation are being found throughout the facility.

The monitor said he takes measurements as soon as he finds water, because he can’t determine whether it’s contaminated just by looking at it. He said he’s very worried about the safety of workers there.

The Japan Times reports that there are extremely high levels of radiation in and around the nuclear plants:

Radioactive iodine-131 readings taken from seawater near the water intake of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant’s No. 2 reactor reached 7.5 million times the legal limit, Tokyo Electric Power Co. admitted Tuesday.

The sample that yielded the high reading was taken Saturday, before Tepco announced Monday it would start releasing radioactive water into the sea [see this for background], and experts fear the contamination may spread well beyond Japan’s shores to affect seafood overseas.

The unstoppable radioactive discharge into the Pacific has prompted experts to sound the alarm, as cesium, which has a much longer half-life than iodine, is expected to concentrate in the upper food chain.

According to Tepco, some 300,000 becquerels per sq. centimeter of radioactive iodine-131 was detected Saturday, while the amount of cesium-134 was 2 million times the maximum amount permitted and cesium-137 was 1.3 million times the amount allowable.

***

The level of radioactive iodine in the polluted water inside reactor 2’s cracked storage pit had an even higher concentration. A water sample Saturday had 5.2 million becquerels of iodine per sq. centimeter, or 130 million times the maximum amount allowable, and water leaking from the crack had a reading of 5.4 million becquerels, Tepco said.

***

Masayoshi Yamamoto, a professor of radiology at Kanazawa University, said the high level of cesium is the more worrisome find.

« By the time radioactive iodine is taken in by plankton, which is eaten by smaller fish and then by bigger fish, it will be diluted by the sea and the amount will decrease because of its eight-day half-life, » Yamamoto said. « But cesium is a bigger problem. »

The half-life of cesium-137 is 30 years, while that for cesium-134 is two years. The longer half-life means it will probably concentrate in the upper food chain.

Yamamoto said such radioactive materials are likely to be detected in fish and other marine products in Japan and other nations in the short and long run, posing a serious threat to the seafood industry in other nations as well.

And NHK news points out that radiation levels are so high in some locations that they are literally « immeasurable »:

A radiation monitor at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says workers there are exposed to immeasurable levels of radiation.

The monitor told NHK that no one can enter the plant’s No. 1 through 3 reactor buildings because radiation levels are so high that monitoring devices have been rendered useless. He said even levels outside the buildings exceed 100 millisieverts in some places.

Fears of radiation spread to rice as the planting season began in Japan, prompting the government to ban its cultivation in contaminated soil as fallout leaking from a tsunami-damaged nuclear plant dealt another blow to the national diet.

Vegetables and milk were the first foods that sparked concerns about the safety of Japanese agriculture after the March 11 tsunami flooded the nuclear plant and its reactors began to overheat and spew radiation. But those worries intensified when highly radioactive water was spotted gushing from the complex into the Pacific and contaminated fish showed up in catches.

Radioactive materials released from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant spread around the entire Northern Hemisphere in the two weeks following the March 11 disaster, an international nuclear watchdog said Thursday.

The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization said minute traces of radioactive substances spread around the hemisphere by March 25 after being carried across the Pacific. But it said the amounts of such substances were far below levels that could affect human health.

Kopp Online, Xander News and other non-English news agencies are reporting that the EU implemented a secret “emergency” order without informing the public which increases the amount of radiation in food by up to 20 times previous food standards.

According to EU by-laws, radiation limits may be raised during a nuclear emergency to prevent food shortages.

But there is anger across Europe because this emergency order was issued while officials say there is no threat to the food.

These rules now to bring into force is absurd, because in Europe there are no nuclear emergency, and certainly no shortage of food.

The European Union has authorized radioactive load in foods in Japan has increased substantially. Until now, a maximum of 600 becquerels of radioactivity (cesium 134 and cesium 137) per kilogram allowed, but since last weekend for example oil or herbal suddenly 12,500 becquerels per kilogram, more than 20 times as high. The increase was recorded in Emergency Ordinance 297/2011 on March 27 and was in force.

Webmaster’s Commentary:

This is proof positive that no one can really manage this catastrophe, so they up the safety level on a toxic chemical!

Russia Bans Seafood Imports From Areas Near Japan Nuclear Plant
Apr 7, 2011
MOSCOW -(Dow Jones)- Russia’s federal food safety watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor has banned the import of seafood from some 242 Japanese processing plants situated near the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant.
In a statement Rosselkhoznadzor said the ban came as a result of the analysis of radiation risks in the area surrounding the nuclear plant.
« Russia’s imports of Japanese seafood in 2010 totaled 57,000 metric tons. »

China‘s health ministry said traces of radioactivity in spinach had been found in three provinces.
India earlier this week banned Japanese food imports for three months.
In South Korea, some schools closed because parents were worried that rain across the country could be toxic.
« We’ve sent out an official communication today that schools should try to refrain from outdoor activities, » an education official in South Korea said.
South Korea’s nuclear safety agency reported a small level of radioactive iodine and caesium particles in rain in the south but said it was not enough to be a public health concern.
Nevertheless, many Koreans donned face masks, and streets near schools in Seoul were more congested than usual as parents drove children to work rather than let them walk.

As reported live last night on the Intel Hub radio show and again today on The Alexander Higgins Show, Japan nuclear radiation including i-131, Caesium 134 and Caesium 137 are now being detected in a wide variety of foods being bought on store shelves in California.

In the first food chain tests made public radioactive contamination was found in spinach, strawberries, topsoil, grass, and milk.

Of the isotopes detected, radioactive iodine has a half-life of 8 days outside of the human body and 100 days inside of the body. The C-134 ha a half-life of 2.0652 years and the c-137 has a half-life of 30.17. C-135 with a half-life of over 2.3 million years is not reported as detected.

A local California newspaper has broken stride with the corporate media and had the sense to issue a radiation alert warning people to stay indoors while a concentrated plume of Japan nuclear radiation blows over the US west coast.

Finally a corporate newspaper that has the courage to stray from the official government mantra that radiation is « safe ».

In the wake of the continuing nuclear tragedy in Japan, the United States government is still moving quickly to increase the amounts of radiation the population can “safely” absorb by raising the safe zone for exposure to levels designed to protect the government and nuclear industry more than human life.

It’s all about cutting costs now as the infinite-growth paradigm sputters and moves towards extinction. As has been demonstrated by government conduct in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of Deepwater Horizon and in Japan, life has taken a back seat to cost-cutting and public relations posturing.

The game plan now appears to be to protect government and the nuclear industry from “excessive costs”… at any cost.

Protective Action Guides , or PAGs as they are called by the Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA ), are used to enforce the law following any incident involving the release of radioactive material. If there were a dirty bomb attack in America or nuclear meltdown, how would the EPA interpret the Clean Water Act? How would it interpret a whole suite of laws that impact upon our food, water and soil? As with the incredibly toxic pollution which has claimed many lives of 9-11 responders, the sole decision about what is safe is an administrative EPA process shielded from public scrutiny.

In 1992, the EPA produced a PAGs manual that answers many of these questions. But now an update to the 1992 manual is being planned, and if the “Dr. Strangelove” wing of the EPA has its way, here is what it means (brace yourself for these ludicrous increases):

A nearly 1000-fold increase for exposure to strontium-90;

A 3000 to 100,000-fold hike for exposure to iodine-131; and

An almost 25,000 rise for exposure to radioactive nickel-63.i

The new radiation guidelines would also allow long-term cleanup thresholds thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever judged safe in the past. Under long-established EPA policy, in conformity with long-accepted international standards on “acceptable” amounts of radiation these proposed changes would increase the permissible amounts of radiation to levels where 25% of those exposed to these “new acceptable levels” would develop cancer based on the EPA’s own numbers.ii

And see these studies on the health effects cumulative doses of radioactive cesium. (As I noted on March 29th, the radioactive cesium fallout from Japan already rivals Chernobyl. And the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl).

Admittedly, the damage from huge single doses may be greater than the same cumulative dose from many small exposures. But the smaller doses can still add up.

Many studies have shown that repeated exposures to low levels of ionizing radiation from CT scans and x-rays can cause cancer. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

Remember, the radiation from CT scans and x-rays are external emitters – the radiation emanates from outside the body. In contract, internal emitters keep emitting their radiation inside the body. Therefore, the cumulative effect of multiple small doses of radiation from internal emitters could be even more dramatic, depending on the half life, metabolic pathways and other properties of the particular radioactive particle.

Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) expressed alarm over the level of misinformation circulating in press reports about the degree to which radiation exposure can be considered “safe.”

According to the National Academy of Sciences, there are no safe doses of radiation. Decades of research show clearly that any dose of radiation increases an individual’s risk for the development of cancer.

“There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” said Jeff Patterson, DO, immediate past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “Exposure to radionuclides, such as iodine-131 and cesium-137, increases the incidence of cancer. For this reason, every effort must be taken to minimize the radionuclide content in food and water.”

“Consuming food containing radionuclides is particularly dangerous. If an individual ingests or inhales a radioactive particle, it continues to irradiate the body as long as it remains radioactive and stays in the body,”said Alan H. Lockwood, MD, a member of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “The Japanese government should ban the sale of foods that contain radioactivity levels above pre-disaster levelsand continue to monitor food and water broadly in the area. In addition, the FDA and EPA must enforce existing regulations and guidelines that address radionuclide content in our food supply here at home.”

As the crisis in Japan goes on, there are an increasing number of sources reporting that 100 milliSieverts (mSv) is the lowest dose at which a person is at risk for cancer. Established research disproves this claim. A dose of 100 mSv creates a one in 100 risk of getting cancer, but a dose of 10 mSv still gives a one in 1,000 chance of getting cancer, and a dose of 1 mSv gives a one in 10,000 risk.

Even if the risk of getting cancer for one individual from a given level of food contamination is low, if thousands or millions of people are exposed, then some of those people will get cancer.

Recent reports indicate the Japanese disaster has released more iodine-131 than cesium-137. Iodine-131 accumulates in the thyroid, especially of children, with a half-life of over 8 days compared to cesium-137, which has a half-life of just over 30 years. Regardless of the shorter half-life, doses of iodine-131 are extremely dangerous, especially to pregnant women and children, and can lead to incidents of cancer, hypothyroidism, mental retardation and thyroid deficiency, among other conditions.

“Reports indicate that the total radioactive releases from the Fukushima reactor have been relatively small so far. If this is the case, then the health effects to the overall population will be correspondingly small,” said Ira Helfand, MD, a member of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “But it is not true to say that it is « safe » to release this much radiation; some people will get cancer and die as a result.”

Japan‘s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said a full-scale recovery of cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is needed to stem the leakage of radioactive substances, but that work will take several months.

Fukushima is a kind of global “kill shot,” make no mistake about that. The situation is dire in the extreme. The global nuclear industry is trying to kill you, and Fukushima is their latest broadside, aimed at the whole planet. The entire nuclear complex, from uranium mining, to nuclear weapons (including depleted uranium munitions), to nuclear electrical generating plants, to research reactors, to so-called “nuclear medicine,” has to go.

It has been learned that the Japanese government withheld the release of computer projections indicating high levels of radioactivity in areas more than 30 kilometers from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The estimates were made on March 16th following explosions at the plant by an institute commissioned by the government using a computer system called SPEEDI. The system made its projections on the assumption that radioactive substances had been released for 24 hours from midnight on March 14th, based on the available data.

But the government was reluctant to reveal the SPEEDI projections, and did not release them until March 23rd.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, there are no safe doses of radiation. Decades of research show clearly that any dose of radiation increases an individual’s risk for the development of cancer.

“There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” said Jeff Patterson, DO, immediate past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “Exposure to radionuclides, such as iodine-131 and cesium-137, increases the incidence of cancer. For this reason, every effort must be taken to minimize the radionuclide content in food and water.”

“Consuming food containing radionuclides is particularly dangerous. If an individual ingests or inhales a radioactive particle, it continues to irradiate the body as long as it remains radioactive and stays in the body,”said Alan H. Lockwood, MD, a member of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

***

Radiation can be concentrated many times in the food chain and any consumption adds to the cumulative risk of cancer and other diseases.

The National Council on Radiation Protection says, “… every increment of radiation exposure produces an incremen­tal increase in the risk of cancer.” The Environmental Protection Agency says, “… any exposure to radiation poses some risk, i.e. there is no level below which we can say an exposure poses no risk.” The Department of Energy says about “low levels of radiation” that “… the major effect is a very slight increase in cancer risk.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says, “any amount of radiation may pose some risk for causing cancer … any increase in dose, no matter how small, results in an incremental increase in risk.” The National Academy of Sciences, in its “Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation VII,” says, “… it is unlikely that a threshold exists for the induction of cancers ….”

Long story short, “One can no longer speak of a ‘safe’ dose level,” as Dr. Ian Fairlie and Dr. Marvin Resnikoff said in their report “No dose too low,” in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Administration spokespeople continuously claim « no threat » from the radiation reaching the US from Japan, just as they did with oil hemorrhaging into the Gulf. Perhaps we should all whistle « Don’t worry, be happy » in unison. A thorough review of the science, however, begs a second opinion.

Many epidemiologic studies show that extremely low doses of radiation increase the incidence of childhood cancers, low birth-weight babies, premature births, infant mortality, birth defects and even diminished intelligence. Just two abdominal x-rays delivered to a male can slightly increase the chance of his future children developing leukemia. By damaging proteins anywhere in a living cell, radiation can accelerate the aging process and diminish the function of any organ. Cells can repair themselves, but the rapidly growing cells in a fetus may divide before repair can occur, negating the body’s defense mechanism and replicating the damage.

Comforting statements about the safety of low radiation are not even accurate for adults. Small increases in risk per individual have immense consequences in the aggregate. When low risk is accepted for billions of people, there will still be millions of victims. New research on risks of x-rays illustrate the point.

Radiation from CT coronary scans is considered low, but, statistically, it causes cancer in one of every 270 40-year-old women who receive the scan. Twenty year olds will have double that rate. Annually, 29,000 cancers are caused by the 70 million CT scans done in the US. Common, low-dose dental x-rays more than double the rate of thyroid cancer. Those exposed to repeated dental x-rays have an even higher risk of thyroid cancer.

Internal Emitters

Proponents of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons argue that we can’t eliminate all man-made radioactivity, that nuclear power and weapons are good, and that we need standards to promote a logical cost-benefit analysis.

But lumping all types of radiation together is misleading … and is comparing apples to oranges.

As the National Research Council’s Committee to Assess the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program explains:

Radioactivity generates radiation by emitting particles. Radioactive materials outside the the body are called external emitters, and radioactive materials located within the body are called internal emitters.

Internal emitters are much more dangerous than external emitters. Specifically, one is only exposed to radiation as long as he or she is near the external emitter.

For example, when you get an x-ray, an external emitter is turned on for an instant, and then switched back off.

But internal emitters steadily and continuously emit radiation for as long as the particle remains radioactive, or until the person dies – whichever occurs first. As such, they are much more dangerous.

Dr. Helen Caldicott and many other medical doctors and scientists have confirmed this. See this and this.

***

It is important to note that each individual internal emitters behaves differently. They each accumulate in different places in the body, target different organs, mimic different vitamins and minerals, and are excreted differently (or not at all). Therefore, comparing radioactive cesium or iodine with naturally occurring radioactive substances – even those which can become internal emitters – is incorrect and misleading.

The Politics Behind the « Science »

I wrote to professor Busby and asked him if the faulty standards – based on external emitters – applied to radiation standards for drinking water, milk and food as well. Specifically, I asked:

Are the current « safe levels » of radioactivity set by governments for drinking water, milk and food based upon external emitters? Or upon internal emitters? I know that the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE) [an independent Committee established by the UK Government in 2001, in which Dr. Busby participated] looked at this issue, but I can’t figure out whether governments ever changed their « safe » levels for food and beverages based on internal emitter science.

I mentioned the radioactive iodine found in rainwater in the U.S. and pointed out that the Canadian government is refusing to test milk for radiation – which is guaranteed to create internal emitters of any radiation when we drink it – based on the statement that radiation levels in the air are not all that high:

Dr. Busby responded:

The current risk model is based upon external acute radiation at high dose rate, the Japanese A-Bomb [i.e. from measurements of the effect of uniform, external radiation on the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]. It is incorrect for internal and this was discussed at CERRIE but the implications were so alarming that the government sacked the Environment minister Michael Meacher who set up the committee and shut it down before it had finished (or even started) the research it was doing and also brought legal threats to bear on members so the final report is a whitewash, even though it concedes the problem exists and that the error may be as high at 10-fold. In fact, there is plenty of data and studies that show the error is from 500 to upwards of 1000. But this is not for all radionuclides, only some. The ECRR (www.euradcom.org) has studied this issue and provided risk model for internal emitters.

Dr. Busby explained that the standards for radioiodine are about 20 times higher than they should be when it will be taken inside the body, and for certain radioactive particulates, up to 1,000 times higher than is safe.

Most local fishery cooperatives in Ibaraki Prefecture are suspending all fishing activities, after small fish caught in waters off its coast were found to contain radioactive cesium above the legal limit.

In 1992, residents at an apartment in Taipei were found to have been exposed to excessive radiation for years without knowing, as the building was constructed with rebar made of scrap metal that contained radioactive cobalt-60, according to the Atomic Energy Council.

Stuxnet, a computer virus designed to attack servers isolated from the Internet, such as at power plants, has been confirmed on 63 personal computers in Japan since July, according to major security firm Symantec Corp.

The virus does not cause any damage online, but once it enters an industrial system, it can send a certain program out of control.

Symantec says the virus reaches the servers via USB memory sticks, and warns against the careless use of such devices.

Systems at power plants, gas stations and water facilities are not connected to the Internet to protect them from cyber-attacks.

It’s Official: Ostensibly, the reason for the nuclear reactors in Japan going into meltdown mode was an earthquake followed by a tsunami. No such dangers exist in Germany, yet they are shutting down their reactors–Do they know something the rest of us don’t, perhaps dealing with a computer worm known as Stuxnet designed to destroy reactors such as these?

U.S. team’s mission is to help SDF
The Yomiuri Shimbun
The primary task of a visiting U.S. nuclear emergency response team will be to help the Self-Defense Forces with operations related to the ongoing nuclear crisis in Fukushima Prefecture, such as decontaminating residents and providing information to assist the SDF’s medical activities.
According to sources, the U.S. team will also prepare for unexpected contingencies, such as a large-scale radiation leak from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
About 10 members of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Chemical Biological Incident Response Force arrived at U.S. Yokota Air Base in Tokyo on Saturday as an advance party. They arrived on a U.S. transport plane from Maryland.

Virtually all the numbers you’re seeing about the radioactivity coming out of Fukushima are based on iodine-131 which only has a half-life of 8 days, not the far more dangerous cesium-137 which has a half-life of 30 years. So while the mainstream media reports that « radiation levels are falling rapidly » from the 7.5 million times reading taken a few days ago, what they’re not telling you is that the cesium-137 radioactivity will take 30 years just to fall by 50 percent.

It’s the great global cover-up in all this: What happens to all the radioactive cesium being dumped into the ocean right now? It doesn’t just burn itself out in a few months like iodine-131. This stuff sticks around for centuries.

Then I started hearing that there were a lot of people from the electric utility industry who were insulting us and our work. They were saying our cancer calculations from radiation were ridiculous, that they were poorly based scientifically, that there was plenty of evidence that we were wrong. Things like that. So I wondered what was going on there. At that point–January 1970–I hadn’t said anything about nuclear power itself. In fact, I hadn’t even thought about it. It was stupid not to have thought about it. I just wondered, Why is the electric utility industry attacking us?

The International Atomic Energy Agency views the accident in Japan as one more serious than the partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island, but says it’s nowhere near the scale of the disaster that occurred in Ukraine twenty-five years ago. Yet each day, tests detect more contamination. Low levels of iodine-131 and cesium-137 in the drinking water of several prefectures, albeit « at levels far below those that would initiate recommendations for restrictions of drinking water, » are high enough to prompt warnings for infants. The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare has detected very low-level contamination in spinach, leafy vegetables, and some meat.

« I want people to see, » said photographer Paul Fusco. « For Lida, it has to be as painful as possible. » Lida is the mother of Aleysa Beoia, a seventeen-year-old girl who Fusco watched die in 2000, as he was shooting a collection of work called Chernobyl Legacy.

His photographs show horror in black and white: An intelligent, lively four-year-old with almost no lymphatic system, his limbs swollen into monstrous trunks; a toddler whose torso blossoms into a tumor that cannot be removed, since his kidneys are contained within it; a baby born with its brain outside its body; children slithering around the floor, wordless pack animals, groaning and rolling, eating from bowls like dogs.

Fusco spent many months, over three visits, exploring state-run facilities dedicated to taking care of children damaged by radiation. They receive suitable care and affection, but no education. Many were born years after the 1986 accident and handed over at birth by devastated parents.

« Everything, anything that can go wrong with a body was there, and more, » says Fusco. « It’s astonishing the amount, the different kinds of destruction. It was like looking at a different race. »

While his work found an audience in Europe, he says it received little attention from the press in the United States. However, after last month’s catastrophe at the Fukushima Da-ichi plant in Japan, some have stumbled upon his Chernobyl Legacy slideshow at the Magnum Photos website, with its haunting music and forthright narration, and, trying to make sense of the situation, linked to his photographs online. (Fair warning: The photos are graphic.)

Webmaster’s Commentary:

I want you to take a good hard look at the child in this picture, and have this image singed into your consciousness every time the Japanese government, the US government, TEPCO, and GE collectively swear that « there is nothing to worry about » from the levels of radiation coming out of the Fukujima reactor.

A strong earthquake with a 7.1 magnitude hit the Tohoku region on Monday, the same area that was devastated by the March 11 quake and tsunami, Japanese authorities said, with tremors felt as far away as central Tokyo as downtown office buildings shook.

The quake struck at 17:16 JST (0816 GMT), with the Japan Meteorological Agency issuing a tsunami warning of waves up to 1 meter, far below the 20-30 meter waves that struck after the 9.0 temblor a month earlier.

What is alarming is that theselatest quakes are underneath Fukushima, wheras the original quake was far out to sea. There is less chance of a tsunami, but clearly the shaking at the reactor site is very intense!

Looking at the map, there is a large industrial park just south of the Tokai nuclear plant It’s a processing plant for fuel. It is where they convert (UF6) to uranium dioxide (UO2). They dissolve that in nitric acid and add ammonia to make « ADU » perhaps better known as « Yellow-Cake » the stuff Saddam was not trying to acquire from Niger or the DRC.
Japan makes more highly enriched Uranium for their Joyo Fast Breeder reactor, which unlike a regular light water reactor that uses 3-5% Enriched U, it uses like 17 or 18% (which is far far away from the 90% needed for a bomb.) The fast breeder can take that and make Plutonium from the non fissile uranium by using the fissile uranium as a power source. They have some way to beta create decay. So they take some U238 and make U235 in Tokai-Mura and then they take that U235 and use it to power fast breeder which takes different U238 and decays it to P239 and then they use the Plutonium as fuel or for MOX reactors.

Anyway they have a wet chemical plant, and a UF to UO plant that pipes this junk around and both have had accidence in the past. Given the area of the radiation nexus and the locations of the plants. I would say either a pipe cracked again, or worse some tank or even all of them are screwed up in the industrial zone. And its just open season for Uranium, just sitting in the ground or in the tanks. My guess is its the pipes because its more likely esp after an under ground quake. I mean it is a reasonable deduction, it happened before, its in the right spot, and most of all no mention of it on TV, which means they know they can not fix it. AND JCO Co. Ltd which is in a zaibatsu style relationship with this mining and metal company, (yes the same that digs up the heavy metals) is in deep deep nuclear poo poo, because from what I have investigated so far, they don’t have the insurance to deal with this as when they got in trouble last time in 99 and 00 they didn’t make the said changes they were supposed to do. Call it money junky fever. Or maybe money junky cancer is a better word.

The charts speak for themselves. Something is leaking either the plant with the cooling system scares, or more likely the processing plant or one of the pipes is singing in the yellow rain. Some nuclear shit is about to hit the fan. I am neck deep in work right now. But I got some others nerds working on this, and I’ll know more or e able to say more on Saturday. Where there is stink there’s poop and Ibaraki is full of the smelly signs of radiation.

And listen I am not writing this to scare anyone. I’m not a sensationalist and I am not even paid to write or research. I’m just telling you this because there ARE radiation spikes in the area and this is what is located right underneath them. I live in Japan. People need to know more about what is going on because the press has been very dishonest in the US and Japan for different financial reasons. These findings are based on demonstrable data not a political agenda or financial stake. If you live in Ibaraki prefecture, especially if you are pregnant or planning to be, I’d get out. Move West towards Kansai, to a safer place like Nara or Higashi Osaka, etc.

Also a warning to California about the ring of fire. Quakes hit The Caribbean, Chile, New Zealand, Japan, next in the circle would be the US. And unlike Japan if there is a tsunami there Will be looting and corruption in the aftermath. And the US broke especially California. I hope it does not happen but the reality is it will some time or another. There is a fault line it does move, it’s not a question of if but when.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, says the water temperature in the spent fuel storage pool at the No. 4 reactor in the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has risen to about 90 degrees Celsius. It fears the spent fuel rods may be damaged.

TEPCO took the temperature on Tuesday using an extending arm on a special vehicle. It found the temperature was much higher than the normal level of under 40 degrees.

To cool the fuel, TEPCO sprayed 195 tons of water for 6 hours on Wednesday morning.

The company thinks the pool’s water level was about 5 meters lower than normal, but 2 meters above the fuel rods.

TEPCO believes the water level is likely to rise by about one meter after the water spraying on Wednesday.

The company also believes temperatures rose after the loss of the reactor’s cooling system.

TEPCO says high levels of radiation at 84 millisieverts per hour were detected above the water surface, where radiation is rarely detected.

The storage pool at the No. 4 reactor has housed all the fuel rods that were in operation at the reactor due to massive engineering work there.

TEPCO has sprayed more than 1,800 tons of water on the No. 4 reactor using fire engines and special vehicles since the March 11th crisis. The company feared that fuel rods could cause evaporation of water and put workers at risk of exposure.

University of Tokyo Professor Koji Okamoto says the temperature of 90 degrees indicates that cooling is continuing, although some of the water in the pool may be boiling. Okamoto says high radiation indicates the possibility of radiation leaks from damaged fuel.

Webmaster’s Commentary:

« The company thinks the pool’s water level was about … 2 meters above the fuel rods. »

A temperature rise in Fukushima Japan Nuclear Reactor #4 to over 200% normal levels and the new discovery of elements produced only during nuclear fission in the fuel ponds fuel fears that the spent fuel rods may be melting down.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, says the water temperature in the spent fuel storage pool at the No. 4 reactor in the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has risen to about 50 degrees Celsius over 200% higher than normal levels. It fears the spent fuel rods may be damaged. Tepco also said it has found elements in the nuclear 4 spent fuel storage pool that are only caused during nuclear fission. This provides evidence that there is a meltdown underway in the number 4 reactor.

TEPCO confirms damage to part of No. 4 unit’s spent nuke fuel

TOKYO, April 14, Kyodo

Some of the spent nuclear fuel rods stored in the No. 4 reactor building of the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi power plant were confirmed to be damaged, but most of them are believed to be in sound condition, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday.

The firm known as TEPCO said its analysis of a 400-milliliter water sample taken Tuesday from the No. 4 unit’s spent nuclear fuel pool revealed the damage to some fuel rods in such a pool for the first time, as it detected higher-than-usual levels of radioactive iodine-131, cesium-134 and cesium-137.

The No. 4 reactor, halted for a regular inspection before last month’s earthquake and tsunami disaster, had all of its 1,331 spent fuel rods and 204 unused fuel rods stored in the pool for the maintenance work and the fuel was feared to have sustained damage from overheating.

The cooling period for 548 of the 1,331 rods was shorter than that for others and the volume of decay heat emitted from the fuel in the No. 4 unit pool is larger compared with pools at other reactor buildings.

According to TEPCO, radioactive iodine-131 amounting to 220 becquerels per cubic centimeter, cesium-134 of 88 becquerels and cesium-137 of 93 becquerels were detected in the pool water. Those substances are generated by nuclear fission.

The government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the confirmed radioactive materials were up to 100,000 times higher than normal but that the higher readings may have also been caused by the pouring of rainwater containing much radioactivity or particles of radiation-emitting rubble in the pool.

The roof and the upper walls of the No. 4 reactor building have been blown away by a hydrogen explosion and damaged by fires since the disaster struck the plant. The water level in the spent fuel pool is believed to have temporarily dropped.

TEPCO said the fuel rods may have also been damaged by steel frames that fell into the pool in addition to overheating caused by the loss of cooling functions after the twin disasters.

The utility plans to examine the condition of the plant’s reactor buildings by deploying a small unmanned helicopter to see whether it is possible to extract spent fuel from pools.

The nuclear agency said now that the condition of the No. 4 unit pool is partially known, workers can better prepare for recovery works there.

Earlier in the day, the government‘s nuclear regulatory agency ordered TEPCO to check the quake resistance of reactor buildings at the Fukushima plant, which have been rocked by strong aftershocks from the magnitude-9.0 earthquake that wrecked the site and triggered tsunami on March 11.

The agency told the utility to immediately examine the buildings and consider reinforcement work if they are judged as not sufficiently quakeproof.

In addition to the No. 4 unit, the Nos. 1 and 3 reactor buildings have also been severely damaged by hydrogen explosions in the early days of the crisis.

”As strong aftershocks occur almost daily, we have to consider what will happen to buildings already damaged by blasts,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the nuclear agency.

He acknowledged the difficulties involved in the work to reinforce the quake resistance of the buildings, where radiation levels are high, but said, ”We must devise some ways.” The agency urged TEPCO to report back to it on the matter as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Yoko Komiyama, senior vice minister of health, labor and welfare, said Wednesday at a Diet session that a total of 22 workers at the plant have been exposed to radiation exceeding 100 millisieverts as of early Wednesday and that the highest level of exposure among them is 198.24 millisieverts.

Exposure to 100 millisieverts is the permissible level for nuclear plant workers dealing with an emergency, but the limit has been raised to 250 millisieverts for the ongoing crisis.

Workers continued Wednesday to remove highly radioactive water in the plant as part of efforts to put an end to the emergency, which is now acknowledged as one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.

TEPCO had pumped out 700 tons of highly polluted water by Wednesday evening from an underground tunnel-like trench to a ”condenser,” where in normal operations steam from the reactor is converted into water.

Eventually, the operator plans to remove a total of 60,000 tons of contaminated water, found in the basements of the Nos. 1 to 3 reactor turbine buildings as well as the trenches connected to them, and to store it in nearby tanks and other areas.

As a result of the operation, the level of highly radioactive water that had been filling up the trench connected to the No. 2 reactor’s turbine building was lowered. Nishiyama said it will likely take several weeks before the tainted water removal operation ends.

The highly toxic water is believed to originate from the No. 2 reactor’s core, where fuel rods have partially melted. The water, which has also affected other parts of the plant, is hampering efforts to restore the reactors’ key cooling functions, lost in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The nuclear agency also said TEPCO has installed three steel sheets near a seawater intake for the No. 2 reactor and set up ”silt fence” curtain barriers near intakes for the Nos. 3-4 reactors at the six-reactor plant to block the spread of radioactive substances in water.

Massive amounts of water have been poured into the reactors and their spent nuclear fuel pools as a stopgap measure to cool them down at the Fukushima plant.

But pools of contaminated water have been detected in various parts of the nuclear complex on the Pacific coast, with some water leaking into the sea, as an apparent side effect of the emergency measure. TEPCO successfully stopped the leak of highly radioactive water from a cracked pit on April 6.

Tokyo Electric has been in denial, trying to downplay the full impact of this nuclear accident. However, there’s a formula, a mathematical formula, by which you can determine what level this accident is. This accident has already released something on the order of 50,000 trillion becquerels of radiation. You do the math. That puts it right smack in the middle of a level 7 nuclear accident. Still, less than Chernobyl. However, radiation is continuing to leak out of the reactors. The situation is not stable at all. So, you’re looking at basically a ticking time bomb. It appears stable, but the slightest disturbance—a secondary earthquake, a pipe break, evacuation of the crew at Fukushima—could set off a full-scale meltdown at three nuclear power stations, far beyond what we saw at Chernobyl.

Nuclear fuel inside the crippled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant has partially melted and settled at the bottom of pressure vessels in the shape of grains, according to an analysis by the Atomic Energy Society of Japan made public by Friday.

The academic body’s panel on nuclear energy safety has said the melted fuel at the No. 1 to 3 reactors has been kept at a relatively low temperature, discounting the possibility that a large amount of melted fuel has already built up at the bottom of their reactor vessels given the temperature readings there.

A large buildup of melted nuclear fuel at the bottom could become a molten mass so hot that it could damage the critical containers and eventually leak huge amounts of radioactive material.

Meanwhile, small amounts of plutonium believed to have been released as a result of the ongoing disaster have been detected in soil samples taken at the nuclear complex in Fukushima Prefecture, the plant operator known as TEPCO said.

It is the third time that traces of plutonium have been found in soil samples taken at the plant. The latest samples were taken on March 31 and April 4. The levels of plutonium in them were about the same levels observed in Japan following previous nuclear tests elsewhere, according to the utility.

Nuclear fuel has melted in three reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and fallen to the lower sections of their container vessels, raising the specter of overheated material compromising a container and causing a massive radiation release, the Atomic Energy Society of Japan said in a report released on Friday.

Webmaster’s Commentary:

In the translation from Japanese to English, it is uncertain whether « container vessels » means the core pressure unit or the outer containment. I tend to think the latter give that it has already been reported that reactor 2 had breached both the pressure vessel and containment.

Here is the problem. The reason there is a pressure vessel is that by keeping the coolant under high pressure, boiling is prevented and cooling efficiency remains high. But if the pressure vessels are compromised (as has already been reported for reactor 2) then cooling is compromised, because coolant steam cannot carry away as much heat as coolant liquid. If indeed all three reactor cores are no longer pressure tight, then TEPCO is stuck having to wait for the cores to cool on their own, which may explain the announced three month delay before they can stop the radiation leaks.

The JAIF released their newest press released today. In the small print under the reactor status, note this new line:

“Small amount of plutonium was detected from the soil sampled at Fukushima Dai-ichi NPS site.(3/21-4/4).” This is a new admission of plutonium detected some time within the period 3/31 and 4/04 based upon an article by the Kyodo News Agency. By their accounting plutonium has been found three times.

In our detailed April 10 article on the disclosure of Plutonium, we detailed four events of Plutonium being disclosed by multiple officials sources on 3/21, 3/22, 3/25, and 3/28. This latest sampling and analysis took place between the dates of 3/31 and 4/04. By our reckoning, plutonium has been discovered at least five time and perhaps more.

Levels of radioactivity have risen sharply in seawater near a tsunami-crippled nuclear plant in northern Japan, signaling the possibility of new leaks at the facility, the government said Saturday. …

The new rise in radioactivity could have been caused by the installation Friday of steel panels intended to contain radiation that may have temporarily stirred up stagnant waste in the area, Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told reporters. However, the increase in iodine-131, which has a relatively short eight-day half life, could signal the possibility of a new leak, he said. …

Smoke rose briefly from a control panel at a nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast Saturday, the operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

No one was injured in the 7:45 p.m. incident that occurred during the checking of water purification equipment at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear complex, the company said, adding it has yet to determine the cause. …

Interview with Arnold Gundersen; 39-year veteran of the nuclearindustry, has worked as a nuclear plant operator and served as anexpert witness on the Three Mile Island accident

… In unit 1, there’s so much mud in the reactor that they can’t get water into the core, which they would normally need to do to prevent it from overheating and melting down. Instead, it appears that they are flooding it from the outside, and cooling it that way. …

There was a report this week that they found iodine-131 in that fuel pool. Iodine-131 can only come from nuclear fission, and because it has a short life, it disappears after about 80 days.

In other words, the presence of iodine-131 suggests that the spent fuel has started its own chain reaction without any human intervention.

That tells me that the racks that have been distorted — by the earthquake, or by the crane that fell in, or by the heat that caused the first explosion.

You’re talking about the racks in the fuel pool that keep the spent fuel apart, preventing the chain reaction that normally goes on in the reactor. And you’re saying that these racks were apparently damaged, enabling the fuel to reach critical mass and re-start the chain reaction on their own, without controls?

Yes. As workers pour water into unit 4 — which they need to do to keep it cool — they might essentially be creating a nuclear reactor, without control rods used to shut down the reaction, and without a containment building to keep the radiation in.

So unit 4 is still a significant risk. The fuel could get hot enough from the chain reaction that it will boil the water out again. So we could still get a fuel pool fire. That would volatilize some really heavy elements, sending some highly carcinogenic materials into the atmosphere. This should be a very big concern.

And that’s not the only problem. Another concern is that as a result of the accident, the building housing unit 4 is very weak structurally. They’re going to have to shore it up somehow from below so it can handle all the extra weight. Right now there’s little or no water in the fuel pool. They need to add water to keep the fuel cool. The pool has a crack in it, so it’s not clear that they can fill it with water. If they do, they will add so much weight that if there’s another seismic event it could cause the building to break, which would not be good.

What about the risks to units 2 and 3?

In unit 2, they’re pouring water in the top to cool the fuel. Nuclear reactors are usually cooled using a closed system, in which cooling water circulates through the fuel rods. When the water gets hot, it is cooled via a heat exchanger and re-used in the reactor. Because it never leaves the reactor the radiation stays inside.

But the water they’re pouring into the top of unit 2 is flowing out the bottom because the containment is leaking. So unit 2 is the biggest polluter of the Pacific. It’s going to constantly pour out water at a terrible level but it’s stable. I don’t think it’s going to get worse.

What about unit 3?

Unit 3 is the one that looks the worst, with the most rubble. But the reactor is actually the closest to being cool. It’s almost at boiling, 200 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than any of the other units.

That said, the spent fuel pool on unit 3 looks from all the pictures to be partially obliterated. And it’s the most highly contaminated because of the explosion. The damage to this facility tells me that the fuel has been scattered, and will be hard to reconstitute.

Nuclear fuel has melted in three reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and fallen to the lower sections of their container vessels, raising the specter of overheated material compromising a container and causing a massive radiation release, the Atomic Energy Society of Japan said in a report released on Friday…

Melted fuel rod fragments have sunk to the bottoms of three reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant and could theoretically burn through the pressure vessels if emergency water-pumping operations are seriously disrupted, the Atomic Energy Society of Japan said Friday.

If too many of the melted fuel fragments puddle at the bottom, they can generate enough concentrated heat to bore a hole in the pressure vessel, which would result in a massive radioactive release to the environment. …

This article about the melting says the containment vessels are at risk of the fuel melting and compromising the vessels by melting through them. The TEPCO people are downplaying that saying it is a uniform melt and the vessels are not at risk.

But if the vessels are not at risk and have not melted through, then why is there so much radioactive water under and around the vessels? It seems to me that there has been a melting through. They are placing a steel barrier around reactor 2 which is the one that was disclosed to have a cracked vessel with melted rods underneath it a couple of weeks ago.

What I am reading is the fact the plant is actually had a full melt down in all the reactors (except for 5 and 6) and it is only through information here and there that the whole picture is coming to light. The TEPCO and Japanese government are not being honest with the Japanese people nor the world.

With the amount of nuclear radioactivity on the ground around the plant, it suggest to me that the fuel rods have melted through their containment vessels. It was disclosed 660 tons of radioactive water was pumped out from under the reactors this last week alone and those underground areas filled up once more yesterday with the same level that was pumped out.

With that information, common sense tells you the only place that water can be coming from is cracked and damaged containment vessels which they keep pouring water in.

Why would they do that, unless those at the top of various corporations and banks are getting information the normal people are not getting. For a bank to walk away from a huge investment like that speaks volumes!

Why is it that governments and corporations always hide the truth from the people? Do they have the attitude of « You can’t handle the truth »? People knowing the truth then can make up their own mind on what they need to do. It seems only the elite may be given what the truth is, as they seem to be getting out of Japan in record numbers now.

You will see someone posted this link in a comment below. It is an excellent link with up close photos and information. Thank you for the link, to the anonymous who posted it!

It is the biggest default ever in Japan’s History – it is worth 3.3 Billion. Morgan Stanley left their investors high and dry with this default! Will this information come to light in the U.S. MSM?

Portions from Article:

TOKYO (Reuters) – A Morgan Stanley property fund failed to make $3.3 billion in debt payments by a deadline on Friday, handing over the keys to a central Tokyo office building to Blackstone (BX.N) and other in

The $4.2 billion MSREF V real estate fund missed its April 15 deadline to repay 278 billion yen($3.3 billion) vestors, the largest repayment failure of its kind in Japan.

The refinanced debt was sold in six different tranches by Morgan Stanley to investors.Now comes the question on WHY Morgan Stanley did this?

Commonsense says they know something we do not or they can read the writing on the wall. Tokyo is getting a major amount of radiation from the Fukushima melt down. They have decided to walk away from their investments there.

I have read this morning (16th) that planes have been chartered with the elite getting out of Japan in a more hurried fashion than before.

Update -I have found information on the building they have walked away from.

Interview with Arnold Gundersen; 39-year veteran of the nuclearindustry, has worked as a nuclear plant operator and served as anexpert witness on the Three Mile Island accident

Is this accident as bad as Chernobyl?

It’s worse than Chernobyl. …

So if it’s worse than Chernobyl, is this the worst industrial accident ever?

I think this and the Bhopal accident in India [where hundreds of thousands of people were exposed to the toxic gas methyl isocyanate, killing thousands] are going to be neck and neck for that category. So it’s worse than Chernobyl…

I absolutely disagree with the scientists who say that Fukushima’s not going to hurt anyone. The numbers I’ve seen, from reputable scientists, are that Fukushima is going to kill 200,000 from increased cancers over the next 50 years. …

Interview with Arnold Gundersen; 39-year veteran of the nuclear industry, has worked as a nuclear plant operator and served as an expert witness on the Three Mile Island accident

[Emphasis Added]

… [M]y biggest fear right now is the unit 4 spent fuel pool… There was a report this week that they found iodine-131 in that fuel pool. Iodine-131 can only come from nuclear fission, and because it has a short life, it disappears after about 80 days.

In other words, the presence of iodine-131 suggests that the spent fuel has started its own chain reaction without any human intervention. …

As workers pour water into unit 4 — which they need to do to keep it cool — they might essentially be creating a nuclear reactor…

The fuel could get hot enough from the chain reaction that it will boil the water out again. So we could still get a fuel pool fire. That would volatilize some really heavy elements, sending some highly carcinogenic materials into the atmosphere. This should be a very big concern. …

The Tokyo Electric Power Company said workers on Thursday relocated emergency diesel generators and pumps for injecting water into the plant’s No. 1 to 3 reactors to higher ground, about 23 meters above sea level.

Webmaster’s Commentary:

That is one of the things that should have been done from the start, which would have prevented the cascade of events resulting in the radiation poisoning of the Pacific.

Nuclear Engineer, Arnie Gundersen, discusses why TEPCO’s announcement of an increased accident severity level should not be a surprise. He also discusses similarities among the Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima nuclear accidents and how Governments are once again limiting public access to accurate radiation dose information. Lastly, Gundersen responds to the overwhelming number of email inquires regarding the Fukushima accident.

Record levels of japan nuclear radiation have been found in the Pacific Ocean off the Fukushima, Japan Coast. The radiation is expected carried toward the US by fast-moving currents.

NHK news reports record levels of radiation in the ocean off the coast of Fukushima have been detected.

High radiation levels in sea off Fukushima coast

The science ministry says radiation levels in seawater off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture are the highest since it began monitoring them about 3 weeks ago.

The ministry says the level of iodine-131 was 88.5 becquerels per liter in a sample taken on Monday in the sea about 30 kilometers east of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The figure is 2.2 times the government’s upper limit for wastewater from nuclear facilities.

The level of cesium-137 was also the highest observed so far, but was below the limit.

Tokyo Electric Power Company says the iodine-131 level was 23 times the upper limit in a sample taken 15 kilometers from the plant.

This was the highest figure since TEPCO began taking samples 15 kilometers offshore on April 2nd.

Radiation levels are higher in the sea to the north of the crippled plant.

The news agency also reports that the radioactive material is expected to be carried East Toward the US in a fast-moving ocean current.

Diffusion of radioactive substances predicted

Japan’s science ministry says radioactive substances will continue to diffuse to the northeast in the Pacific Ocean for several days after being released from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The ministry conducted a computer-simulated prediction of movements of such substances, based on a seawater survey as well as data on currents in nearby waters.

On April 2nd, levels of radioactive iodine-131 near the water intake of the plant’s No. 2 reactor were found to be 7.5 million times higher than the legal limit.

The ministry says the radiation levels are on the decline, but remain high.

The ministry’s short-term prediction says the substances will spread from the coast to the northeast, maintaining their levels for several days.

The ministry’s long-term prediction says the substances will be carried south by a current 100 kilometers offshore in lowered concentrations, then move east with a rapidly-moving current off Ibaraki Prefecture in about a month.

The ministry said the concentration of radioactive substances in the sea is likely to decrease gradually.

The ministry plans to step up monitoring of the movement of radioactive substances in waters around the plant and release another prediction.

The concentration levels of radioactive iodine and cesium in groundwater near the troubled Nos. 1 and 2 reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have increased up to several dozen times in one week, suggesting that toxic water has seeped from nearby reactor turbine buildings or elsewhere, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday.

The Japanese government’s nuclear safety agency has decided to raise the crisis level of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant accident from 5 to 7, the worst on the international scale.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency made the decision on Monday. It says the damaged facilities have been releasing a massive amount of radioactive substances, which are posing a threat to human health and the environment over a wide area.

The agency used the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, or INES, to gauge the level. The scale was designed by an international group of experts to indicate the significance of nuclear events with ratings of 0 to 7.

On March 18th, one week after the massive quake, the agency declared the Fukushima trouble a level 5 incident, the same as the accident at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979.

Level 7 has formerly only been applied to the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986 when hundreds of thousands of terabecquerels of radioactive iodine-131 were released into the air. One terabecquerel is one trillion becquerels.

The agency believes the cumulative amount from the Fukushima plant is less than that from Chernobyl.

Officials from the agency and the Nuclear Safety Commission will hold a news conference on Tuesday morning to explain the change of evaluation.

Breaking news coming across the wires from Reuters right now reporting that the Japanese media is reporting the Government of Japan is finally considering raising the IAEA nuclear alert level to a level 7 event.

This is a developing story an updates will posted on this page soon.

The news comes after officials in Japan finally pressure to increase the evacuation area around the Fukushima nuclear reactor amid protests and new scientific studies showing increased levels of radiation beyond the evacuation zone.

Amid growing public pressure including massive protests from the citizens of Japan and enough doublespeak to make you head spin in circles the Japanese government has finally agreed to widen the evacuation zone around the Fukushima nuclear reactor.

The Vancouver Sun has posted the first article on this I have found so far.

Nuclear crisis may equal Chernobyl: Kyodo report

Japan has previously assessed the accident at the same level as the Three Mile Island incident

By Yoko Kubota and Kazunori Takada,

TOKYO – Japan is considering raising the severity level of its nuclear crisis to put it on a par with the Chernobyl accident 25 years ago, the worst atomic power disaster in history, Kyodo news agency reported on Tuesday.

The report came as the government expanded an evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant because of the high levels of accumulated radiation since a 15-metre tsunami ripped through the complex a month ago, causing massive damage to its reactors which engineers are still struggling to control.

The Kyodo report said that the high levels of radiation that have been released by the Fukushima Daiichi plant meant it could raise the severity level from 5 to the highest 7, the same as the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

It said the government’s Nuclear Safety Commission had estimated that at one stage the amount of radioactive material released from the reactors in northern Japan had reached 10,000 terabequerels per hour of radioactive iodine 131 for several hours, which would classify the incident as a major accident according to the INES scale.

The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) is published by the International Atomic Energy Agency and ranks nuclear and radiological accidents and incidents by severity from 1 to a maximum of 7.

CNN is reporting on live TV that government of Japan has officially upgraded the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster to a Level 7 incident event. There is also breaking news of a new fire has broken out at the Fukushima nuclear reactor #4 just a short time ago minutes after Japan was rocked by a 7.1 earthquake. I will be adding updates on the Reactor #4 fire on the link above as they come in.

CNN is now giving a review of why the government of Japan has officially raised the nuclear alert level to level 7 pointing out that people have been throwing around the fact that nuclear fission has occurred and the cladding has melted on the fuel rods way to casually.

In that article I covered the breaking news covering the announcements coming out of Japan.

Now it’s official. The Japan Fukushima nuclear disaster has officially been upgraded to a level 7 event by the Japan government reports NHK news out of Japan.

Japan to raise Fukushima crisis level to worst

The Japanese government’s nuclear safety agency has decided to raise the crisis level of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant accident from 5 to 7, the worst on the international scale.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency made the decision on Monday. It says the damaged facilities have been releasing a massive amount of radioactive substances, which are posing a threat to human health and the environment over a wide area.

The agency used the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, or INES, to gauge the level. The scale was designed by an international group of experts to indicate the significance of nuclear events with ratings of 0 to 7.

On March 18th, one week after the massive quake, the agency declared the Fukushima trouble a level 5 incident, the same as the accident at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979.

Level 7 has formerly only been applied to the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986 when hundreds of thousands of terabecquerels of radioactive iodine-131 were released into the air. One terabecquerel is one trillion becquerels.

The agency believes the cumulative amount from the Fukushima plant is less than that from Chernobyl.

Officials from the agency and the Nuclear Safety Commission will hold a news conference on Tuesday morning to explain the change of evaluation.

Now the question to be answered is will all the corporate media outlets that repeatedly said this is no Chernobyl and called alternative media journalists such as myself “alarmists” redact the millions of articles they published and post corrections? Will they stop using quotes from their so-called experts who have been proven wrong time and again throughout this disaster? Will they finally start taking quotes and interviews from the independent scientists and scientific institutions who have had this right from the start?

For a series of accidents happening at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency of the Ministry of Economy, which released large amounts of radioactive substances that affect human health and the environment in a wide range As an assessment based on international standards of the accident, the worst “level seven” decided to raise. “Level 7″ is the same as the evaluation occurred in the Soviet Chernobyl disaster. Nuclear Safety Agency, 12, held a press conference with the Nuclear Safety Commission has decided to publish the contents of the evaluation. …

The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan released a preliminary calculation Monday saying that the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant had been releasing up to 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials per hour at some point after a massive quake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March 11.

The disclosure prompted the government to consider raising the accident’s severity level to 7, the worst on an international scale, from the current 5, government sources said. The level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale has only been applied to the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.

The current provisional evaluation of 5 is at the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 1979.

Japan’s prime minister is urging the public not to panic after the government boosted the severity level of the crisis at a tsunami-damaged nuclear plant to the highest rating — on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

The government will expand evacuation districts near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, its top spokesman said Monday.

With the crisis at the plant dragging on, some municipalities within a 20- to 30-kilometer radius of the power plant will now be designated as additional evacuation areas, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said at a news conference.

The government had earlier ordered residents within the 20-km radius of the power station to evacuate and those in the 20-30 km zone to stay indoors after the plant was hit by a deadly earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

The government changed the radiation exposure level which had been used to determine the evacuation zone.

Millions of gallons of highly radioactive water are accumulating on the site, as a result of drenching the stricken reactors to try to prevent them melting down, as the accident is officially raised to the most serious level available under international standards, a rating only previously awarded to the Chernobyl catastrophe twenty five years ago this month.

A lethal lake of some 15 million gallons of the stuff has already built up in the depths of the nuclear complex, and hundreds of thousands more are being added to it every day. It will all have to be made harmless before the site can be declared safe – and that, experts say, will take many years.

(NaturalNews) As the famous physicist Dr. Michio Kaku said on April 4th, « The situation at Fukushima is relatively stable now… in the same way that you are stable if you hang by your fingernails off a cliff, and your fingernails begin to break one by one. » (http://bigthink.com/ideas/37705). That same article also refers to the Fukushima damage assessment by the NRC’s Nuclear Safety Team, which concluded that « cooling to the core of Unit 1 might be blocked by melted fuel and also by salt deposits left over from the use of sea water. »

… A month into the crisis, the utility acknowledges, there is no end in sight. …

Some Japanese experts now say the effort is in danger of failing unless Japan seeks more help from international experts to bring it to an end. …

Tokyo Electric officials told CNN they can’t say when they’ll be able to restore those normal cooling. …

Satoshi Sato, a Japanese nuclear industry consultant, called the current line of attack a “waste of effort.” Plant instruments are likely damaged and unreliable because of the intense heat that was generated, and pumping more water into the reactors is only making the contamination problem worse, he said. “There is no happy end with their approach,” Sato told CNN. …

[Tetsunari Iida, an engineer-turned-industry critic] said Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors remain too hot to pour concrete, but he suggested pouring a slurry of minerals and sand over them to carry away heat before encasing them. …

Japan‘s plan to end the Fukushima nuclear reactor crisis involves letting radiation leak for the next 3 months.

The manufacturer of the Fukushima nuclear reactor revealed the plan to end the nuclear reactor radiation leak which will be split into 3 phases over 10 years. The first stage will take about three months during which they plan to stabilize the nuclear reactor and spent fuel pools while preventing the radiation leak from increasing.

You read that correct, NO PLAN TO STOP THE RADIATION LEAK WITHIN THE NEXT 3 MONTHS – ONLY A PLAN TO STOP THE LEAK FROM INCREASING.

New EPA milk samples in Hawaii show radiation in milk at 800% above limits for C-134, 633% above limits for C-137 and 600% above EPA maximum for I-131 for a total of 2033%, or 20.33 times, above the federal drinking water limits.

… The jet stream is carrying the radiation from Japan to North America. Most of the radioactivity disperses in the atmosphere and falls over the Pacific Ocean on its way over, but some of it has now reached the west coast, falling down with rain, and mixing with seawater. It’s also accumulating in seaweed.

The rainwater tested was collected at SFU’s campus on Burnaby Mountain and in downtown Vancouver, while seaweed samples were collected in North Vancouver near the Seabus terminal. Researchers began monitoring rainwater earlier this month but did not see the signature for iodine-131 in samples taken March 16 and March 18. However, they did detect the radioisotope’s signature in samples from March 19, 20 and 25.

Here are the results from the tests (measured in decays of iodine-131 per second per litre of rainwater – Bq/l):

The risks associated with iodine-131 contamination in Europe are no longer « negligible, » according to CRIIRAD, a French research body on radioactivity. The NGO is advising pregnant women and infants against « risky behaviour, » such as consuming fresh milk or vegetables with large leaves.

In response to thousands of inquiries from citizens concerned about fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Europe, CRIIRAD has compiled an information package on the risks of radioactive iodine-131 contamination in Europe.

The document, published on 7 April, advises against consuming rainwater and says vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant or breastfeeding women should avoid consuming vegetables with large leaves, fresh milk and creamy cheese.

The risks related to prolonged contamination among vulnerable groups of the population can no longer be considered « negligible » and it is now necessary to avoid « risky behaviour, » CRIIRAD claimed.

However, the institute underlines that there is absolutely no need to lock oneself indoors or take iodine tablets.

Data for the west coast of the United States, which received the Fukushima radioactive fallout 6-10 days before France, reveals that levels of radioactive iodine-131 concentration are 8-10 times higher there, the institute says.

With no end in sight to the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japan’s neighbors are increasingly stepping up efforts to curb food imports, both fresh and processed, from parts of Japan.

Tokyo is Japan’s main container port and is just 200 kilometres from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, the Safe Port Foundation says. « A single container doesn’t pose a serious threat but a great many grouped in a single area could cause dangerous radiation levels », the organisation explains. Not only ports in China and the US are likely to face the threat, the foundation’s website warns, but harbours in Europe are also expected to be exposed.

Port staff are urged not to touch anything coming from Japan unless it is strictly necessary. It is wrong to assume, the organisation stresses, that most radioactive material is washed away or blown off the ships and the containers during a long sea voyage.

Across America, smaller newspapers not controlled by corporate chains owned or influenced by General Electric are starting to honestly report on the seriousness of the fallout now pouring down over the northern hemisphere.

Igor Gramotkin is … the manager of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, and has spent more than two decades at the site of the most devastating nuclear accident in history, trying to stop further radiation emissions and cleaning the area. Mr Gramotkin admitted that the destroyed reactor, still full of radioactive waste and nuclear fuel, remains « a threat not only to Ukraine but to the whole world » until it is encased in a vast steel structure that is being built. In the months after the accident, a makeshift « sarcophagus » had been constructed to encase the reactor, but it is now unstable and, despite work to shore it up, experts say a new shelter is desperately needed in case the old one collapses. At more than 100m tall, the shelter will be the largest moveable structure ever built. Those building it still have to be extremely careful. Standing in the area immediately around the plant subjects a person to radiation equivalent to about one old-style chest X-ray per day. The human costs of the Chernobyl accident are … horrific by any estimate. [Some] studies put the figure in the hundreds of thousands. There are incidences of genetic mutations, children born lacking organs, and dramatically elevated thyroid cancer levels in local children, who drank milk contaminated with radioactive iodine in the years after the accident.

Note: For many reports from major media sources on the government and corporate corruption that allows the nuclear industry to continue, click here and here.

On a tract of government land along the Savannah River in South Carolina, an army of workers is building one of the nation’s most ambitious nuclear enterprises in decades: a plant that aims to safeguard at least 43 tons of weapons-grade plutonium by mixing it into fuel for commercial power reactors.

THE PROBLEMS The cost has soared to nearly $5 billion, and the structure — as big as eight football fields — is half finished.

Along the way, the cost of the South Carolina project, originally about $1 billion, nearly quintupled. Energy Department officials said cost increases were to be expected because the original estimates were rough approximations. The sprawling plant, which is just south of Aiken, S.C., is to be bigger in size than eight football fields, and its construction currently employs nearly 2,000 workers.

The project grew out of talks with the Russians to shrink nuclear arsenals after the cold war. The plant at the Savannah River Site, once devoted to making plutonium for weapons, would now turn America’s lethal surplus to peaceful ends. Blended with uranium, the usual reactor fuel, the plutonium would be transformed into a new fuel called mixed oxide, or mox.

After the cold war, the United States and Russia were left with stockpiles of plutonium, and the fear was that one or the other would reverse course and use the plutonium to make new weapons, or that, in what the National Academies of Science called a “clear and present danger,” thieves could make off with it.

Plutonium is easy to handle because the radiation it gives off is persistent but relatively weak. The type used in weapons, plutonium 239, has a half-life of 24,000 years and emits alpha rays. They make the plutonium feel warm to the touch but are so feeble that skin easily stops the radiation. If trapped inside the body, though, alpha rays can cause cancer.

At the same time, plutonium is preferred over uranium as nuclear bomb fuel because much less is needed to make a blast of equal size. And while it is difficult to work with, it does not need to undergo the complex process of purification required for uranium.

Energy Department officials do not dispute that there would be additional health consequences, but they see them as less severe than the critics have predicted. In any event, they argue, a major release of plutonium would require an accident so severe that the additional health effects would amount to a “sliver on top of a mountaintop.”

There is a lot of confusion about how many excess cancer deaths will likely result from the 1986 Chernobyl accident in Ukraine. As we see below, 70,000 and 35,000 are reasonable estimates of the number of excess cancers and cancer deaths attributable to the accident.

Much lower numbers of cancers and deaths are often cited, but these are misleading because they only apply to those populations with the highest radiation exposures, and don’t take into account the larger numbers of people who were exposed to less radiation.

The international expert group predicts that among the 600 000 persons receiving more significant exposures (liquidators working in 1986-87, evacuees, and residents of the most ‘contaminated’ areas), the possible increase in cancer mortality due to this radiation exposure might be up to a few per cent. This might eventually represent up to four thousand fatal cancers in addition to the approximately 100 000 fatal cancers to be expected due to all other causes in this population. Among the 5 million persons residing in other ‘contaminated’ areas, the doses are much lower and any projected increases are more speculative, but are expected to make a difference of less than one per cent in cancer mortality.

(The “most contaminated” areas were those with contamination greater than 555 kilobecquerel per square meter (kBq/m2) of Cs-137, and the “contaminated” areas had greater than 37 kBq/m2 of Cs-137.)

Roughly 20% of people die of cancer, so we would expect a million fatal cancers in a population of 5 million. A one percent increase would translate into 10,000 additional cancer deaths, so according to this report, there would be fewer than 10,000 excess cancer deaths among those in the contaminated areas. These deaths would be in addition to the 4,000 fatal cancers among evacuees, liquidators (clean-up workers), and those in the most contaminated areas.

Because of this report, people frequently cite “4,000” as the number of eventual excess cancer fatalities. However, by limiting its analysis to people with the greatest exposure to released radiation, the report seriously underestimates the number of cancers and cancer deaths attributable to Chernobyl. The effects of the radiation were not limited to the “contaminated” areas but would be felt in Europe and beyond.

The current understanding of the relationship of cancer to radiation is that the risk of cancer increases linearly with dose and that there is no safe amount of radiation. This understanding is represented by the “Linear No-Threshold” (LNT) model of cancer.

We can estimate the number of additional cancer deaths using data from several publications of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), which give estimates of the radiation exposure from the accident. Unfortunately, the information is not all available in one publication.

…the estimated lifetime effective doses for the populations of the three countries living in contaminated areas are about 40,300 man-Sv from external exposure and 20,400 man-Sv from internal exposure, for a total of about 60,700 man Sv.

The collective effective dose is estimated at about 125,000 man-Sv to the combined populations of Belarus, Ukraine and the relevant parts of the Russian Federation, and about 130,000 man-Sv to the population in the rest of Europe.

The numbers in parentheses are “95% subjective confidence intervals,” which the report states

… reflect the most important uncertainty sources—namely, statistical variation, uncertainty in the factor used to adjust risk estimates for exposure at low doses and low dose rates, and uncertainty in the method of transport.

For gamma and beta radiation, which are of interest here, 1 Sv = 1 Gy. Assuming an equal number of males and females in the affected population, we see that the expected incidence and mortality of solid cancers and leukemia are 0.1135 cancer cases and 0.057 cancer deaths per Sv.

For example, for a collective dose of 600,000 person-Sv, the expected number of cancer cases would be 68,000, of which some 34,000 would result in death. If we apply the lower and upper confidence bounds, we find a range of 34,000 to 140,000 excess cancer cases, of which 16,000 to 73,000 would be fatal.

The estimated collective doses and the health consequences for different areas are shown in the table below.

Table 2: Numbers in italics are calculated. Values in the first unshaded row are from Chernobyl’s Legacy.The number in row 5 is found by subtracting rows 1-4 from the Total in row 6.

Note that because exposure only increases the probability of developing cancer, in general no given cancer can be attributed to Chernobyl. Moreover, because these additional cancers will be distributed among hundreds of millions of people, they will not be discernable among all the other cancer cases. (Table ES-1 indicates that on average, about 42% of people have cancer at some point in their lives, and about 20% of people die of cancer.) However, the large increase in thyroid cancers among children in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia following the accident clearly indicates that it was the cause of the increase.

Besides having iodine on hand for emergencies, we can grow (and, at present, purchase) herbs and foods that prevent our bodies from storing radioactive particles. Some of these foods and herbs even remove radioactive particles from our bodies. As we are all already being affected by radiation released by numerous sources, eating these foods and doing detoxification and chelation protocols regularly is a good idea.

1. The daily outflow of deadly radiation from Japan’s Four Chernobyl’d Reactors increased Ten Times on March 31.
2. The Japanese Government in conjunction with GE and the American CIA cut off information the next day.
3. Information has resumed and is “controlled”.
4. The March 31st Radioactive Plume is expected in the States, the EU and Asia on April 11th and 12th. The Southern Hemisphere will get all this spread out over the next year.
5. The Plume contains Radioactive Iodine, Strontium, Plutonium, Cesium and other highly lethal radioactive substances.

SYDNEY (AFP) – Scientists have for the first time shown a link between intensifying climate events and tectonic plate movement in findings that could provide a valuable insight into why huge tremors occur.

Understanding why plates change direction and speed is key to unlocking huge seismic events such as last month’s Japan earthquake, which shifted the Earth’s axis by several inches, or February’s New Zealand quake.

An Australian-led team of researchers from France and Germany found that the strengthening Indian monsoon had accelerated movement of the Indian plate over the past 10 million years by a factor of about 20 percent.

Lead researcher Giampiero Iaffaldano said Wednesday that although scientists have long known that tectonic movements influence climate by creating new mountains and sea trenches, his study was the first to show the reverse.

The aftershocks rattling Japan since the record quake may continue for at least six months, experts say.

« Aftershocks as big as magnitude 7 are likely to continue hitting in eastern and northern Japan for at least six months, » said Teruyuki Kato, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Earthquake Research Institute, on Thursday.

Page 4-4 (57 in the PDF file): » Fuel is not stored in the upper containment pool during normal operation. »

Webmaster’s Commentary:

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This would explain Japan’s reluctance to allow outsiders to view the reactor remains. The cooling pools are intended to be used during fueling and defueling operations, but are otherwise supposed to be left empty during normal operations!

When Angela Merkel declared a moratorium on nuclear energy after the recent disaster in Japan, critics accused her of playing politics. Now she appears to be serious. A national summit in Berlin has laid out a six-point plan to move Germany away from nuclear power.

The pledge came quickly. Just days after the earthquake and tsunami decimated Japan’s northeastern coast on March 11 — and triggered the ongoing nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima power plant — German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised to bring an end to nuclear power in Germany and accelerate the switch to renewables. Now, Merkel is taking initial steps toward that goal.

Japan‘s largest nuclear utility has announced that there has been a safety cover-up for decades at its nuclear power plants. This is a devastating blow to an already embattled nuclear industry with global implications.

One of the problems that has come to light is corrosion of the reactor core shroud, but TEPCO did not inform the Japanese Government for at least one year. The safety cover-up and falsification goes beyond the core shroud and other vital components in TEPCO’s reactors. TEPCO was planning to load MOX into one of its reactors later in September, defying opposition from local citizens who feared it was not safe. It has emerged in the last week that the reactor into which TEPCO was planning to load MOX, has been found to have serious corrosion in a vital component of the reactor.

« Japan’s nuclear industry and Government has been exposed once again as ignoring fundamental safety problems at their nuclear reactors – risking catastrophic accident and the lives of tens of millions. This is only the start of the scandal. There is a lot more to be revealed and the industry and Japanese Government safety authorities will have to be forced to release all relevant information. It is confirmation once again that the nuclear industry is inherently dishonest and cannot be trusted. The ramifications of this latest news will be felt around the world, » said Kazue Suzuki of Greenpeace Japan

The immediate postponement of TEPCO’s plutonium program is a further blow to the business prospects of British Nuclear Fuels and Cogema, both were desperate to secure contracts with Japan. Currently BNFL is shipping a cargo of rejected plutonium MOX fuel from Japan after they lied to their largest Japanese client over vital safety quality control data. The only reason BNFL is making the shipment, and why the UK Government agreed to a compensation package of over 100 million sterling to Japan, was on the basis of Japan signing contracts for MOX with BNFL.

“Everything is a secret,” said Kei Sugaoka, a former nuclear power plant engineer in Japan who now lives in California. “There’s not enough transparency in the industry.”

Sugaoka worked at the same utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant where workers are racing against time to prevent a full meltdown following Friday’s 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami.

In 1989 Sugaoka received an order that horrified him: edit out footage showing cracks in plant steam pipes in video being submitted to regulators. Sugaoka alerted his superiors in the Tokyo Electric Power Co., but nothing happened. He decided to go public in 2000. Three Tepco executives lost their jobs.

The legacy of scandals and cover-ups over Japan’s half-century reliance on nuclear power has strained its credibility with the public.

(Reuters) – Encasing reactors at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant in concrete would present much more of a challenge than Chernobyl, according to an executive of the firm whose pumps are helping cooling efforts there.

« In Chernobyl, where a single reactor was encased, 11 trucks were in action for a number of months. In Fukushima we’re talking about four reactors, » Gerald Karch, chief executive of the technical business of unlisted machinery maker Putzmeister, said in an interview with Reuters.

The United States and Israel are behind the computer worm Stuxnet designed to hurt Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, state news agency IRNA reported Saturday quoting a military officer.

« Investigations and studies show that the source of Stuxnet originates from America and the Zionist regime, » the commander of the Iranian civil defence organisation, Gholam Reza Jalali, said.

Jalali was the first Iranian official to accuse Tehran’s two arch-foes over the Stuxnet virus. German computer experts and some Western media reports had indicated that the United States and Israel were behind it.

Stuxnet was publically identified last June and it reportedly mutated and wreaked havoc on computerised industrial equipment in Iran in the following months.

The worm was reportedly targeting Bushehr nuclear power plant, where several technical problems have been blamed for delays in getting the facility fully operational.

Jalali said once the worm mounts on a system, it begins to gather information and then sends reports from the infected machines to designated Internet addresses.

« After following up the reports that were sent, it became clear that the final destinations (of these reports) were the Zionist regime and the American state of Texas, » he was quoted as saying by IRNA.

Webmaster’s Commentary:

The real question is that since the reactors at Fukushima used the same Siemens’ controllers Stuxnet attacks, and since Stuxnet was known to be loose in Japan near Fukushima last November, and given that three of the 6 reactors did not properly shut down as they were designed to do when the quake struck because their controllers did not operate properly, did Israel and the United States, in their blind hate against Iran, unleash a nuclear hell on Earth for us all?

20 atomic deserts, a list of places worldwide that are uninhabitable due to radiation. Some of the areas are polluted from nuclear power waste and some are from bombs. Chernobyl is just one of many places in the world that remain dangerously radioactive to this day

My Disclaimer:

I present this information in my capacity as a human being, under Common Law, exercising my fundamental God given rights and freedoms. This information represents my private thoughts and beliefs and has been compiled and expressed for educational purposes only. In no way should it be construed as either legal or financial advice. If anyone feels a need to determine the accuracy of this information and the effectiveness of apply any of it, I strongly recommend consulting a competent expert on this subject matter.

Here’s a Clue:
Look the one place « They » never talk about.
Look to your heart, as your competent expert lies within.
« Seek and you shall find. »